Skim
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- Jan 3, 2014
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- Brantford, Ontario
What are you using and why. Have you gone from RO - RO/DI to TAP why?
Ro-ro/di-tap
- Thread starter Skim
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This is always a big debate lol. I did tap in my first tank and had nothing but problems with algae and other issues. My next tank was the same, and then I switched to RO from a store. Suddenly my plagued issues were going away. Now I run RO/DI in my larger systems and those issues are barely prevalent. If there are issue, they are normally easily managed. The reason I use RO/DI is that you do not know what is in that 200ppm (cities range from 50 to 600ppm that I have seen) in your tap water. Also after time things like metals do not evaporate. Every time you add top up water, you will increase the metals in your tank. Water changed do nothing as the water you are adding has the metals in it as well. It may take a year, or years to see the negative effect, but it will happen. Something to remember is that not all tap water is the same. Either way, you do not know there is an issue until the rock and substraight is saturated with what ever is causing the issue. If started with tap water, it will be months before it is removed from your system through water changes plus the rock will continue to leech for a while afterwards. I have seen several success full tanks with tap water. I have seen even more less successful tanks with tap water.
jeffopentax
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- Nov 11, 2013
- Location
- Brantford, Ontario
Years ago i started with tap. No issues, except GHA got out of hand, as it does. Got tired of it waving at me so thought I’d pony up the money and do it the “right” way. Ordered up a 7 stage ro/di system. Not long after I started using that, things went downhill fast! Lost a lot of fish. Could be coincidental, and could have been something completely unrelated to the ro/di. There’s a thread on here somewhere about it. Still don’t know what exactly happened. It was discouraging enough to send me back to a freshwater tank for awhile. So I’ll continue to use tap, and just battle the GHA with GFO.
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Skim
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- Jan 3, 2014
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- Brantford, Ontario
Sorry guys, I guess I should have explained it. Just wondering what people are using for make up water and water for water changes. 2 is have you gone from say Tap to RO or RO/DI from RO or RO/DI to Tap. I have just noticed some people have, not just here, have gone from RO/DI to just RO or staight back to Tap Water. Now some say they maybe lucky and have not noticed much or any difference going back to Tap some have said they have noticed an improvement going back to Tap or dropping the DI and in doing so have quite the savings in just dropping the DI portion and even more when dropping RO totally when you add in the Waste water. Now I know DI does some funky stuff to the water. It pretty much creates dead water as it strips it and even strips much of the O2 from the water and for some reason it is hard to replace the O2 levels. Example, an article I read quite some time ago on a Fresh Water enthusiast, who fell in love with Discus to the point he wanted to breed them and not just any. He wanted to get them from a Special German Breeder, so he set up a rack of tanks in his Basement and spared no expense and upon receiving his purchase of close to $10,000.00 dollars in rare and hard to find Discus they all went straight to the surface, he lost the enter purchase. He was upset and accused the supplier of poor shipping and after discussing what his preparation was he was told NEVER EVER USE 100% RO/DI a max of 50/50 should be used as it creates dead water and should only be used for Laboratory use, he was told his fish died from lack of O2 and when he tested water for O2 levels where extremely low.
Apparently O2 is not absorb into DI water as CO2 is absorb much easier and faster so it becomes very hard and lengthy time before O2 levels come back to acceptable levels.
SO something to think about. I use a 5 stage dual DI but I have be debating about dropping the DI or RO/DI totally.
Apparently O2 is not absorb into DI water as CO2 is absorb much easier and faster so it becomes very hard and lengthy time before O2 levels come back to acceptable levels.
SO something to think about. I use a 5 stage dual DI but I have be debating about dropping the DI or RO/DI totally.
To some it up, discus are freshwater fish. The chemistry is completely different between the 2 hobbies. Data between the 2 are completely different. Even marine ICH is different the fresh water ICH.
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Skim
Active Member
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- Jan 3, 2014
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- Brantford, Ontario
OK, but you start with a base being the water it differs once salt is added to water and if the DI strips almost all O2 to begin with and then add the fact the produced water will attract CO2 quicker then O2 could make it even worse then Fresh as Salt Water holds less O2 to begin with.
AdInfinitum
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- Jan 12, 2012
- Location
- Thorndale, Ontario
The carbonic acid equilibrium is not really a key factor at play here.
I question a story where someone did all of this preparation to keep discus but wasn't aware of their basic need for soft slightly acid water?
No, RODI is not good for FW fish or any living thing due to its complete lack of electrolytes. Soft water has dissolved electrolytes like sodium and potassium. Hard water has primarily dissolved minerals.
The reason RODI is considered the best starting point to make CONSISTENT salt water is that by removing everything from the water you have complete control over the composition of the finished product. Our salt mix is of course a big bucket filled with future dissolved electrolytes and minerals.
Personally my town tap water is too inconsistent to work with so I use RO. I have DI but consider it overkill as long as you maintain your membranes and monitor the output. If your input water was so bad that you still were seeing more than single digit tds after your membrane I would be more inclined to add more inexpensive prefiltration to solve that and extend membrane life.
IMO The DI stage was more relevant when we did not have easy and relatively inexpensive ways to remove phosphate from our water as it is one of the more likely things to pass the membrane and not likely even register on your tds meter.
I question a story where someone did all of this preparation to keep discus but wasn't aware of their basic need for soft slightly acid water?
No, RODI is not good for FW fish or any living thing due to its complete lack of electrolytes. Soft water has dissolved electrolytes like sodium and potassium. Hard water has primarily dissolved minerals.
The reason RODI is considered the best starting point to make CONSISTENT salt water is that by removing everything from the water you have complete control over the composition of the finished product. Our salt mix is of course a big bucket filled with future dissolved electrolytes and minerals.
Personally my town tap water is too inconsistent to work with so I use RO. I have DI but consider it overkill as long as you maintain your membranes and monitor the output. If your input water was so bad that you still were seeing more than single digit tds after your membrane I would be more inclined to add more inexpensive prefiltration to solve that and extend membrane life.
IMO The DI stage was more relevant when we did not have easy and relatively inexpensive ways to remove phosphate from our water as it is one of the more likely things to pass the membrane and not likely even register on your tds meter.