Bottled water vs RO water

[tonym10]

I am planning on setting up a 180 fowlr at my work.
I used to have a 75g reef at home , but I am not home much so I had to take it down.
At home i use rodi but at my work I have no way of making rodi water.
So my question is , is ro water really that much better then the bottled water I have provided a link for. This bottled water reads 0 tds.
Full details for the water are in the link . The bottled water I am referring to in the link is the Drinking water or the Distilled water, not the natural spring or the flouridated water.


Deer Park Spring Water (http://www.nestle-watersna.com/pdf/DP_BWFA.pdf)

Thanks

[Jeff]

A small ro/di unit and a faucet adaptor will pay for itself in time and should be easier then lugging around bottled water IMO. If you trust the bottled water and dont mind carrying around bottles of water then dont worry about it.

[Genetics]

On the PDF, they don't list phosphate levels or ammonia. There nitrate levels are higher than what I keep my tank at. So I would probably say that is not an ideal situation. I would go with an RO unit. They pay for themselves in less than 100 gallons.

[tonym10]

Nitrate is listed at not detectible for their distilled and not detectible to .17 nitrate . Do we have a dependable test kit that measures 1/10th of 1 ppm of nitrate? Nitrite is 0 , I can measure ammonia and phosphate to verify they are 0.

[tonym10]

I own a ro/di unit . The cost is not the point . Buying water is much more expensive then making ro. I cannot make ro water here. The question is will this water based on the data be as good as ro water would be.

[bertoni]

I would buy distilled water. That should be fine. I wouldn't risk spring water, since it could have a lot of surprises in it, but it might be fine.

[michaeldaly]

The bottled water is most probably worse than tap water, many of them contain large amounts of minerals.

As mentioned distilled water wood be a good bet, it is better than Ro/DI.

[therealfatman]

I would venture to bet the the bottled drinking water is carbon and RO filtered water that has had a residual disinfectant added to it. Most likely chloramine, so just add some Amquel. I am assuming the bottled water is being provided by your empoyer so the cost is not an issue, just the water quality.

The bottled drinking water has obviously been very highly filtered (not necesssarily well enough to have also gone through a DI unit however) and what is now there has mainly been added rather than being left from the filtration process. It to pure to be an unfiltered natural source water.

The distilled water speaks for itself. The conductance of a pure water is consider as 5.5 x 10^6 s/m or below.

Even the drink water is in that conductivity range.

[Billybeau1]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13987174#post13987174 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by michaeldaly
The bottled water is most probably worse than tap water, many of them contain large amounts of minerals.

As mentioned distilled water wood be a good bet, it is better than Ro/DI.

Nothing is better than ro/di at zero tds. Not even distilled.

[redfishsc]

Distilled water will work just fine ESPECIALLY for a FOWLR tank, but what a pain! I cannot stand lugging around the water for my massive 10g tank (no I did not forget a 0!) . I'd hate to see how much of a back breaker a 180 would do to me!

If you had a service who could bring you all the distilled you wanted, in 5g jugs, then sure, go for it if you can spend the money. Sure is easy that way.


However, for a 180, man, just get a portable RO unit. This will be a time when "the bigger the better" will apply, though, as you don't want to have to constantly run the RO unit at work.

[Jflip2002]

Did you know bottled water regulations and restrictions are less stringent than city/tap water? Also, this "distilled" water could be detrimental. Some companies use equipment/pipes in their distilling process. There are some places (chemistry labs for example) who consider "distilled" water 100% H2O, and are strict. I would imagine that bottled distilled wont be pure H2O.

[Boomer]

Genetics

That is as Nitrate (N) 0.17 or 0.78 ppm NO3- And that chloride more than likely is converted Chlorine from running through GAC.



Fatman

5.5 x 10^6 s/m * the - is missing and needs 4 more zeros

That is 550 uS/cm @ 5.5 x 10^ - 6 s/m and pure water is 0.055 uS/cm or 5.5 x 10^ - 10 s/m or 18 mega Ohms. 1 / R_s = uS. So 1 / 18 = 0.055 uS /cm

This keeps one straight

Convertor Siemens per meter into TDS in PPM or MHO (Siemens) cm, etc..

http://www.lenntech.com/unit-conversion-calculator/tds_engels.htm



Joe

I have some bottled water in the frig that if you used it for a tank it would peg a Silica test kit :lol: 85 ppm


tonym10

The only thing wrong with that water is really only the Nitrates. Its TDS is 0.5 ppm - 1.5 ppm.


Billy

Nothing is better than ro/di at zero tds. Not even distilled.

I would not go that far at all. However, this DW on this website is no that pure with that conductivity. The purest water is DW, it depends on the "grade" of it, just like how well your RO/DI is wokring /running. Nothing is more pure the Triple DW water.

[therealfatman]

Thanks Boomer, I need your editting quite frequently. Quite a factor difference in leaving out that -.

I guess I should have said ultra pure water instead of pure water.

However, two different sources, two different terms, two different figures. Go figure.

Guess I should use reference text instead of just looking at one quick online sources.

Boomer, note the source of the first conductivity for ultra pure water.

Typical conductivity of waters:
Ultra pure water 5.5 · 10-6 S/m
Drinking water 0.005 – 0.05 S/m
Sea water 5 S/m

http://www.lenntech.com/water-conductivity.htm

lenntech then gives another set of conductivity values here and lists water as either ultra-pure, pure or purified.

http://www.lenntech.com/deionised-demineralised-water.htm

Then there is the eutech instruments site.

Solution Conductivity
Absolute pure water 0.055 µS/cm
Power plant boiler water 1.0 µS/cm
Good city water 50 µS/cm
Ocean water 53 mS/cm

http://www.eutechinst.com/techtips/tech-tips25.htm

Triple DW water! Wow, not the most readily available water. Maybe at a good pharmacy, a laboratory chemical supply house, definitely not a grocery store item, or a drinking water supplier item.

I would imagine that the bulk majority of distilled water sold in this country goes through a single distillation. I would not be surprised to see traces of chemicals that evaporate at lower temperature than water in a lot of distilled water that is sold cheaply is this country.

[Beckly]

Do you really want to haul 20+ Gallons of water home when u need to do a big water change? Thats about 8 lbs per gallon....my back is bad enough. I bought a great RO unit (didnt bother with the DI cause i want good drinking water and RO is pure enough) that brings my 160 ppm well water down to about 10ppm, which is better than most bottled water.

Total cost of my 5 stage system was $120
took a couple hours to install and was well worth it.
Not advertising but my lfs recommended aquasafe canada(they were pretty good to me) and as all systems are pretty much universal (only diference being brand of RO memebrane and diferent carbon for different effect, i.e. heavy chlorine) I dont recomend spending to much on name brands.

[Boomer]

Fatman

Typical conductivity of waters:
Ultra pure water 5.5 · 10-6 S/m
Drinking water 0.005 – 0.05 S/m
Sea water 5 S/m


I had not see this but you can see they made an error also so thanks for pointing in it out. It is not often than Lenntech makes errors.

The error can easily be seen in this

Sea water 5 S/m.

And should be 5.3 S/m but that is still an error

There are 100 cm in 1 meter, not 10. So, 5.3 x 100 = 530 S/cm and it should be 53 S/cm. It is 0.53 S/m.

I also do not like the so called new term Siemens but prefer Dr Siemen's term Mho, the word Ohm written backwards as Conductivity is the opposite or Resistivity.

1 / umho/uS = Ohms, as in MegaOhms or mohms or Ω ohms

1 / Rs(megaohms) = uS or uMho

Yah that TDW is also costly. Many labs now just go with some of the untis like Millipore has or something from PureLab ( note 18.2 Ω Ohms )

http://www.millipore.com/catalogue/module.do?id=C9185

http://www.elgalabwater.com/?id=4005



Introduction to Conductivity from Eutechinst

IIRC I have posted this in the past form this link, where Eutechinst must have kiped it from ;) As the C-P link has been around for +1 decade and in their catalog for like 20 years.

http://www.coleparmer.com/techinfo/techinfo.asp?htmlfile=Conductivity.htm&ID=78

Eutechinst, seems to have some new *maybe nice new meters but still no match for HM Digital. I wonder if this is the old Orion pen meters they use to have a few years back. It looks allot like them IIRC.

http://www.eutechinst.com/pdt-type-pocket-testers-ecotestrtdshigh.html

[Boomer]

Fatman

Oop's forgot .

I would imagine that the bulk majority of distilled water sold in this country goes through a single distillation. I would not be surprised to see traces of chemicals that evaporate at lower temperature than water in a lot of distilled water that is sold cheaply is this country.

Yes, I agree 100 %. Most is probably like that posted on that link or ~ 1 ppm TDS or so.

[tonym10]

Thanks for the replies
If you scroll down to page 11 to 12 of this link it explains their distilled water process.
Distilled water process (http://www.nestle-watersna.com/pdf/DP_BWQR.pdf)