Water Report for my town, give me opinions

[mkjohnson1990]

Hey everyone, so obviously I'm a noob if I'm asking for your opinions, but I got a water report for my town (College Station, TX) so let me know how beast I should make sure my RO/DI system is before I purchase it. I know from tasting the water that it has a lot of S*** in it lol. The lady told me that even though this is from 2011, the report for 2012 isnt released until May of 2013, and since it is groundwater, the contaminates don't change at all, if any from year to year. Anyway, here it is in PDF form:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/32075884/2011%20Water%20Quality%20Report%20052412.pdf

[downbeach]

I couldn't open the file.

[mos90]

tds at 500 and ph at 8.5 is high. will eat up some di resin. at 385 ppm total alk water is very hard. not sure if it will cause any issues. i dont see them using chloramine so thats good.

i would go with a good 6 stage system . he is an example

http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/brs-6-stage-deluxe-ro-di-system-75gpd.html

[mkjohnson1990]

Yes I knew the water was very hard because I have had issues keeping the water from clouding in my freshwater tanks. I really cant wait to get RO/DI water in my freshwater and see how well it helps my fish/tank.

[mos90]

an ro/di unit will not help to soften water. you could run a softening stage but your water is still to hard for that. you will need to run a separate water softener.

[disc1]

an ro/di unit will not help to soften water. you could run a softening stage but your water is still to hard for that. you will need to run a separate water softener.

RO/DI will get you down to pure 0 TDS water. I don't know how you would make it any softer.

Installing a softener before the ro unit will likely help the filters to last a bit longer. But it isn't necessary to get pure water out of it.

The big red flag to me in that report is the copper number from 09. That's really high. This years numbers seem to be lower, but that could be thanks to creative sampling. I'd make sure to change my DI resin as soon as I started seeing anything breaking through.

A good 5 stage will get you where you need to go. A 6 stage will give a little added peace of mind when it comes to the copper.

If you are going to use RO water in your freshwater tank then you will need to get an appropriate freshwater salt mix to put some minerals back. Absolutely pure water would be a very bad idea for your freshwater fish.

[mos90]

disc. did you see the second report of copper in 2011 is seems to be a lot lower. .0063 or something like that vs. the .16 in 2009.

what could you use? some api aquarium salt?

[disc1]

disc. did you see the second report of copper in 2011 is seems to be a lot lower. .0063 or something like that vs. the .16 in 2009.

See that's what I don't know. The pH is pretty high in that water and I wonder if that was the case in '09. Many times what they will do is to jack the pH up to get the copper and lead to stay out of solution. The solubility of those two goes down dramatically at basic pH. In St Louis I've measured the tap water as high as 9. When I called the water dept. they told me it was on purpose because otherwise they would pick up lead from some of the old pipes.

The other, scarier, possibility is that they used some sort of creative sampling to get the number they wanted. It isn't unheard of for a municipality to change sampling locations or times if they know it will help their numbers.


what could you use? some api aquarium salt?

What kind of freshwater fish?

Running a water softener wouldn't be a bad idea on that water, not only for the sake of your RO unit but also for your drinking water and for washing. If you were to do that, then the softened tap may end up being a better choice for your freshwater tanks than the RO. I like using the waste water off my RO unit for my freshwater tanks since it is dechlorinated by the carbon. But I literally have Dasani coming out of my tap, they bottle it right up the road. You'd want to see what that water looked like vs the type of fish you want to keep.