Makin' water - what's your take?

[neanderthalman]

tapwater has strict quality control

 

 

 

No really. You should go on tour with this material.

 

 

 

 

 

Try this for an experiment. Start your faucet running in your kitchen, and get a friend to tap on your pipes. Tell me, what color does the water turn? Would you drink that?

 

Tap water requirements are not very strict - they do a lot of testing, but their thresholds for what is and what is not "acceptable" are actually really high for most contaminants. That's not strict.

 

Tap water conditions also change with seasons, they change with construction (local and non local) and in older homes, even slamming a little-used door can release a burst of toxic crap into your pipes, ready to nuke your tank. You can test it today and it's fine, but unless you test it each and every time, you're gambling.

[AZDesertRat]

One problem and neanderthalman eluded to it is drinking water quality is measured at the source, as in treatment plant or wells and not at the tap. The distribution system is a massive network of pipes, hydrants and valves and many things can go wrong between the plant and your house. A few of which are cross connections or backflows of non potable water, regrowth of organics in the lines, degredation of residual disinfectants and bacteria growth, breakdown of things like chloramines into their more common elements of chlorine and ammonia, buildup of sediments, sand and calcium scale over time and many more.

Having your own RO or RO/DI gets rid of all these concerns and give you ultimate control of your water quality. We drink the RO as well as use it for the icemaker and cooking and I use the RO/DI for the tanks.

 

The camelbacj type packs are not a substitute for RO or RO/DI, they treat water to remove the bacteria and viruses so you can drink it, very different than a semipermeable membrane. Thye also have a very short useful life before the filter must be replaced. They have their purpose but its not for reef water.

[masterbuilder]

Hope it works out with the tap water. Keep us updated.

BUT... a Mightymite with a sink adapter is something I would look at. Can be stored anywhere when not in use.

[timdanger]

maybe this is a dumb question, but if you are using just regular tap water to top-off or make your salt water, and all that water comes to you through copper pipes in plumbing (presumably), wouldn't you be adding a lot of copper? isn't that sort of the reason that we use PVC instead of copper on our tank plumbing? obviously if you plumbed a tank with copper, there's much more recirculated/extended contact with the copper, but it still seems like over time, the copper going into your tank from the tap water would build up. and that's just another reason to use RODI.

 

i could be way off base here. just throwing this out there.

[AZDesertRat]

Today you don't get much copper from the pipes and plumbing since the EPA enacted the "Lead and Copper Rule" several years ago. This rule says water utilities must monitor the lead and copper levels in their water along with pH and Langlier Index. What this means is if your tap water has a low pH and/or low or negative Langlier Index, the utility must treat the water to raise the pH and Langlier Index and/or ann anti corrosion chemicals like ortho or polyphosphates so the copper and especially lead contained in older solders (pre 1983) does not go into solution.

You notice I mentioned phosphates? These create another problem in tap water as does chlormaines and many other things whioch may be considered safe for drinking but bad for a reef.

 

The key is you have absolutely no control over your tap water quality without a point of use treatment device like an RO or RO/DI unit. Its very very cheap insurance!

[Mr. Fosi]

The phosphate that water utilities add forms a monolayer on the inside of pipes which greatly reduces the dissolution of copper (or of lead if the city is very old).

[neanderthalman]

It also goes without saying, that saltwater is far more corrosive than freshwater. While you won't see substantial corrosion and dissolution in freshwater (which is then minimized by the treatments described above), you'll see rapid corrosion and dissolution in saltwater. It's nasty stuff.

 

Try this experiment. Take two glasses of water, and fill each one halfway - one with freshwater and one with salt. Now drop a penny in each one and wait.

 

 

 

The other thing to consider is that even trace amounts of a contaminant will build up in your tank through evaporation and topups, and can eventually reach toxic levels.

 

 

 

Edit - set up a quick spreadsheet for a demo calculation. Assume evaporation of 10% tank volume per week, and a 10% water change per week, using tapwater with a contamination concentration of 100ppm. In six months, your contamination has almost doubled to 184ppm. It approaches 190ppm asymptotically.

 

Change evaporation to 20% (more realistic, IMO), and your contamination doubles in eight weeks, and stabilizes at 280ppm (almost three times the concentration as the tapwater!).

 

Even if you started with RO/DI, it would only take 12 weeks for the contaminant to reach 200ppm, using tapwater with 100ppm of contamination for topup and waterchanges.

[kv2wr1]

I had problems with LFS bought RO/DI water so I decided to make my own. It's a lot better to make your own RO/DI since you have more control over the quality of the water. Don't skimp on anything in this hobby because sooner or later it will come back to haunt you.