I use rainwater for my lucky bamboo and I've propagated two cuttings so generally I'm doing alright.

Just lately - having a cold winter here - I've got some browning of leaf ends but I'm not much worried.

But I am a little bit.

There is one feature of my setup that I'm not sure about. The water. I use rainwater and no fertiliser, though a year ago or so I did use a little soluble once.

But I don't change the water so much as top it up.

And it gradually has gotten greener and greener and I've always thought of that as a good thing - an indication of life and water health and a mimicking of what I'd take to be the situation in the wild.

But just recently googling around and seeing pages of photos of lucky bamboo here and there I notice no one else ever seems to have green water. They all seem to have it pristine clear.

And one text I read suggested that stuff growing in the water can clog the pores of the dracaena so's it can't drink.

Same text suggested that growing in soil was bad for the same reason.

But other places, of course, there's texts advising people to plant into soil soonest in order to cure their problems so - same old internet problem: too much conflicting information.

Can I appeal to the community for some authoritative word on this?

Not to be rude of course, and denigrate anyone's advice, but a little mention of the basis for the advice might help me sort out which is more liable to be trustworthy overall - i.e. to suit my case as well as it presumably suited theirs.

Is the 'lively' green water good, or bad, or doesn't matter?

And I notice though my propagated shoots are apparently still healthy they don't appear to have generated any length of roots in about maybe three months. Is that okay?