Newb q's on RO/DI

[Wrench]

I've been waaaay to lucky all my life being able to use our well water in my fish tanks. It's nitrate and phosphate free, plus it's got tons of calcium in it. Well it's finally time to move out so I'll be on city water in our new apartment. I'll be new to the whole making my own water thing. Is it as simple as hooking up a water source to a RO/DI unit and letting it do it's thing or is there more to it than that? Is there anything that the unit wont take out? Obviously I'm going to have to start dosing Calcium, is there anything else? I want to be sure I have all my bases covered before I even ATTEMPT to move either tank to the new place. Last thing I want to do is get it set up and have no usable water.

[RCBrooke]

I'm no expert but from reading.....

Hook it up to water & drain, waste the first couple of minutes of RO water (people with Total Disolved Solids testers say so) and then your good to go. They need good pressure to work well but if your on city water I guees you should be ok. I'd suggest a TDS tester to tell when the cartridges need replacing.

Good luck,
Randy

[SpektralerSpeer]

Hi Wrench,

it's a shame that you can no longer use well-water, in my opinion that must be about the best water you can get. To answer your question, it pretty much is as simple as hooking the RO/DI to the mains supply and leaving it to it, there are certain pressure requirements (should be stated on or around the unit) and membranes/resin wear out after a while and need to be changed (again this can depend on the unit).
a good RO/DI takes out upwards of 99% of impurities, there may be some things it can't remove but they are generally fine for what we do.
Mixing RO/DI water with good-quality salt gives you pretty much everything you need, you may need to dose calcium (or use a calcium reactor) and trace elements if you have lots of corals, otherwise frequent water changes should suffice.

Paul