Ro/di?
 

I'm new to the hobby, and have a few questions about RO/DI.

Is RO/DI completely necessary to keep saltwater fish?....and other saltwater life?

What if I just set up an RO system, would I be doing anything bad to the fish/life by not De-Ionizing the water?

I want to set up the system so I can take tap water from a stand alone tank, pump it into the RO/DI system with a water pump, and have the filtered water come out into another stand alone tank right next to the other one....is this at all possible?

Thanks!

:dance:

the ro filter needs high pressure to work so that wont work for you as far as di water you can use just ro water its better than just tap but you may ecounter algae problems and other issues just using ro water

Ditto what troyman said. Many people use only RO water, it is just that RO/DI is the best you can use. Some of my local fish stores sell just RO water, and I actually used it up until I got my own RO/DI system. When I set up my new tank with all RO/DI water, the hair algae on my rocks did not grow back. Previously in just RO water, it would grow back a couple of weeks after I cleaned it all off by scrubbing.

For me, it is RO/DI only from now on. Much less of an algae problem.

do you need a booster pump to get the water through an RO/DI system?

I think I figured out an easy way to do this...have a "Y" piece come off of my cold water pipe that goes to my washing maching, have one hose plug into the washer, and the other hose plug into the RO/DI system....anyone do this, or know if this is a good idea?

I was just talking with a friend last night about this same thing....wished it was the first thing I bought (should have been)

Unless your water pressure is really low, you can hook it up just like you are thinking about without a booster pump. Some of the RO/DI sellers even sell the Y adapters and the fittings to hook it up to your system. Your RO/DI system should have a pressure gauge on it, and you can adjust the waste water valve to get the pressure higher. My pressure with the waste valve open is about 30lbs, but with it 2/3 closed, the pressure is up to about 60-65 lbs and it produces water a a good rate of about 3-4 gal an hour.

An RO is just a super-duper molecular-sized filter that rejects about 90% to 95% of the ions in the water, as well as any other molecules with a weight over something like 50 atomic mass units. So the quality of what comes out of your RO is directly porportional to what you put into it.

So the big question is: what's in your tap water?

The brute force solution (sorry about the pun) is take everything you possibly can out of the water (RODI) and then add back just what you need (salt mix, trace elements, kalkwasser, etc)

Maybe not the most cost effective solution, certainly not the most environmentally friendly one either. But since most people are in the hobby for their corals and fishes, and not to become water chemists, it is the safest path to follow at this point in time.

And remember the RO mantra, "soft water only, no hard water..."

I do it, just make sure to put a valve of some sort (jg type perhaps) on the line so you don't have to shut down the water supply for the washer when doing maintenance on the filter.

My tap water is very hard here in central Tx.. What is the most inexpensive way
to soften my water before it gets filtered? :eek2:

You will find people on here that use ro/di water, some that only use ro water, some that only use filtered water and some that use plain old tap water or well water to make their saltwater from. The ones that do it one way will swear that their way is the way you need to do it too in most cases.

I started my 175g system with filter only water because I was a dummy and didn't realize that I didn't have the ro membrane in the canister. Ran it for a few months doing water changes before I realized the extra ro membrane I got with my ro/di unit wasn't an extra one, lol. I now use ro/di water for water changes but I have never had an algae problem from using filtered water.