The RO system debate...Should I or shouldn't I?

[SALTY WATERS]

Okay so here are my questions:

1) How cost efficiant is an RO sytem compared to buying bottled water every week at $3.15 for 18.9L?

2) What and how often do you need to change if anything on the RO filters? (I'm pretty safe to assume there is filter media that need be changed)

3) In the near future I plan to get a new tank 70-100gl, so what RO units do you recomend? (I was leaning towards the "Kent Marine Deluxe Hi-S Maxxima 60 GPD" but realy am clueless on this subject and not sure what I will need)

 

[dbacksrat]

i can't give you much help, but its cheaper in the long run paying for the water that you produce w/ an RO unit than buying it week after week

 

[aresgod]

there is media in each canister that needs to be changed, but it depends on how much you run the RO unit, in the long run it will be better than buying water, simply because you dont have to move it, or buy it, the initial cost is high but in the long run it is a good investment, I would say third in priority list, 1. skimmer, 2. lights. 3 RO unit, because what you put in is what you get out, plus if you have a sumo you can just set the RO unit to auto top off so it will take care of evaporation rates for you, but that will make the set up much more complicated, ok, im later for my Roman archaeology exam, hope this helped
Brahm

 

[KahluaZzZ]

in 2 weeks i got rid of algae with ro/di. In our tap water, you can smell the chlorine. If your plumbing suck, you can have rust too and many unwanted metal. There's po4 and a little nitrates too in some tap water.
Once you use ro/di, you may have to add calcium 'cause the ro/di nuke the calcium from tap water. My salt doesn't compensate for this loss, so i use reef advantage calcium by seachem..and dosing it might make little ph swings.
When i add some water without salt to replace the evaporated one, i add some seachem reef buffer 8.3 because the water has a very low ph since no salt is present

 

[aresgod]

the water is essentially neutral, and has a very low ph, i am not sure if it even has the ions to register ph, because RO removes all ions and what not i believe

 

[1979camaro]

DI removes ions, but most RO (reverse osmosis) units are also DI (deionization) units

 

[dbacksrat]

in my tap water, when you look through a drinking glass full of the junk, you can see God-knows-what floating around...tastes like crap too

 

[aresgod]

yea but that is in the desert, they have to pipe it in from hundreds of miles away....

 

[SALTY WATERS]

I think I agree that an RO unit will pay for itself in the long run as well it is suck a pain in the A$$ having lug all the water jugs around week after week. As for the quality of water I currently use "Distilled" water, Never tap.

What do you all think of the unit I am looking at? Yeah! or neah!