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Differences between RO water and DI water

RO - reverse osmosis pushes water through a membrane and has a huge rejection rate of 4:1 and higher depending on temp.

DI - pushes water through a bed of DI resin with no waste water. This is a more expensive option is you have higher co2 content in your water. To do this one right you still want to have a carbon and prefilter prior to the DI.

RO tends to run higher in TDS while using DI you can get lab grade water. You can get lab grade water from really expensive RODI units but we're talking multi thousand dollar units.
 
I know this isn't the case for everyone, but I've converted completely over to City of Berkeley tap water on my reef tanks and I have not had any issues with coral health or nuisance algae in the five months since I've converted.

A couple things to point out:

Not all City Water is created equal, nor are pumping in houses, or neighborhoods.
My tanks were established tanks, well over a year old.
I run a heavy bag of Purigen (re-bleached every three months) and a bag of Chemi-pure (every 4 months).
I don't run SPS, but a variety of LPS and softies.

I'm firing up a new tank, its actually in the middle of its first cycle, I am going to try this tank at 100% tap water, not sure how it will work out, since it doesn't have the advantage of being an established tank. But one thing I know for sure, it sure is nice to fill a 5gal bucket in the bathtub, put a cap of Prime in it, mix the salt over night and go right to the tank. No RO/DI units, no runs to grocery store, and its cheap!

Again, disclaimer not all City Water is created equal and not all tanks are either!

Cheers,

Josh
 
Will Prime remove Chloramines? I remember SF switched form Chlorine (which apparently will off gas by itself!) to Chloramine.


For the tank I run in my office, we have an actual distillation system. Well, it's for drinking water, but it is boiled then condensed...

V
 
Yes (on Prime).

Watch out for distilled as many drinking water units have copper coils.
 
yes, Prime removes chlorine, chloramine and ammonia. My zoas don't like it(poor extension) if I add it right to the tank, not sure why, so I always dose it and wait 24hrs before adding to the tank.
 
also another point, Purigen is amazing stuff and there is such thing as TOO MUCH, when I first brought it up on the forum (using large amounts) Jeremy mentioned that it works too good sometimes, and it definitely does, since many of my softies like some level of organics in the water. I started out at 10mg/gal, worked down to 4mg/gal, which seems to be the sweet spot for my tank and bioload.

Cheers,

Josh
 
[quote author=MontanaBay link=topic=6440.msg82688#msg82688 date=1235076325]
yes, Prime removes chlorine, chloramine and ammonia. My zoas don't like it(poor extension) if I add it right to the tank, not sure why, so I always dose it and wait 24hrs before adding to the tank.
[/quote]

Well, if you are adding it to the tank it could be the chloramines are irritating (burning) your corals :D I've never had a problem with Prime and polyp extension.
 
[quote author=GreshamH link=topic=6440.msg82694#msg82694 date=1235076978]
Well, if you are adding it to the tank it could be the chloramines are irritating (burning) your corals :D I've never had a problem with Prime and polyp extension.
[/quote]

no, if I'm using it to de-chlorinate I always wait 24hrs, I was actually seeing how much it dropped the detectable ammonia in my tank, so I was adding drops of it directly to the tank. It doesn't change the pH or anything else, and I did detect a drop in my ammonia, but I had no conclusions since the accuracy of my test probably doesn't escape the variation.
 
I have RO/DI for my reef makeup water and my TDS is zero. I use the same filter for our drinking water. It's good to know that the water going in the tank is clean, since I have a lot of money invested in the livestock. With just the RO alone my TDS is 8, going thru the replacable DI cartridge it goes to zero. I live in Fremont and our city water TDS is high. I know Milipitas city water is a lot lower in TDS as I have witnessed TDS readings in the water stores in both cities.
 
You can't tell a cities TDS from one location, although if it's coming out low the source water is low then :). Next door could have old pipes with 4x the TDS on the same system. It's very location specific.
 
To that same point.... I get a different TDS out of my garden hose than I do my kitchen sink which is also different from my bath tub.
 
My house is consistent but only because it was all plumped at the same time and most pipes are over sized :)
 
Yep.... The kitchen in my house is recently plumbed while the bathroom plumbing is almost 20 years old... That's what I've contributed to the difference in TDS between the two locations.
 
hehe when I re-did my kitchen (torn out down to the studs) I figured I'd remove the old galvanized piping and just use all copper (back when copper was cheap). Took those old galvanized pipes out and a 1/2" pipe had maybe 1/8" of empty space in there due to all the gunk and crap that was on the inside... made me wonder what the hell I was drinking! And these pipes were at most 50 years old, houses older than that... yikes!
 
[quote author=sfsuphysics link=topic=6440.msg82732#msg82732 date=1235083498]
hehe when I re-did my kitchen (torn out down to the studs) I figured I'd remove the old galvanized piping and just use all copper (back when copper was cheap). Took those old galvanized pipes out and a 1/2" pipe had maybe 1/8" of empty space in there due to all the gunk and crap that was on the inside... made me wonder what the hell I was drinking! And these pipes were at most 50 years old, houses older than that... yikes!

[/quote]

You should see old 4" waste lines reduced to 1/4" :(
 
[quote author=palawan link=topic=6440.msg82734#msg82734 date=1235083714]
Well I know Milipitas water is better than Fremont water!!!
[/quote]

In Santa Cruz country we run on a few different water sources and some even on wells. It's incredible the amount of variance we have on TDS even between neighborhoods. While putting my time in at a LFS I was able to tell customers what fish/plants would be best for their area (hard/soft/po4/etc)
 
That sucks. Did the water change noticeably as far as taste and content?
 
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