RO water, good or good enough?

[wowser]

Is RO water good for reefing? I have a 4 stage water system we use at home. It has pre charcoal, sediment, RO membrane and post charcoal. Is not having the de-ionizing a problem?

[AquaticDiscounts]

use a tds meter and see

[AZDesertRat]

A good well maintained RO system gets you 90 to 98% of the way there but still should be followed by DI since there are things RO is not particularly good at.

 

You will also want to bypass the last carbon taste and odor filter since it adds TDS to the water not removes it.

 

A lot also depends on your tap water conditions to begin with, in my case out tap TDS can be in the 800 range so RO only is not an option at all.

[cdr5y7]

for the first year i just had an ro system. when i moved from a 75 to nano cube i noticed an increase in GHA. my tds was 69 with ro system. checked out the filter guys website and bought a add-on di unit and instantly dropped to 000.

 

so RO system is good enough yes if you can find one with DI its better.

[AZDesertRat]

You are getting a TDS of 69 out of an RO? You definitely have a problem. I get a TDS of 5 out of my RO only and my tap water TDS exceeds 800. 69 is way too high, you must have a bad membrane even if its a 90% rejection 100GPD Dow nanofilter. You should be seeing 95-98% rejection. DI gets mighty expensive if you are sending 69 in to it.

[amnestia]

69tds out of an ro-only isn't too shabby but it should be lower depending on how old your membrane is (should be swapped out every few years).

[AZDesertRat]

Amnestia,

69 out of RO is horrendous. What makes you think its OK?

I think you need to do a little more research.

If the membrane is functioning properly that means his tap water TDS is between 1700 and 3400 ppm, not very likely! A properly functioning RO membrane should be removing 96 to 98% of the tap water TDS so if his tap water is in the national average range of 200- 250 TDS he should be seeing a maximum TDS of between 4 and 10. Thats a far cry from 69.

Heck my tap water TDS when I tested it last Sunday was 552 and my RO only was 3.2, both tested with a calibrated COM-100 handheld meter at 68 psi and 69 degrees F water temp. There is absolutely no reason an RO should be returning a TDS of 69 if you have anywhere near normal tap water.

[rivers]

Amnestia,

69 out of RO is horrendous. What makes you think its OK?

I think you need to do a little more research.

If the membrane is functioning properly that means his tap water TDS is between 1700 and 3400 ppm, not very likely! A properly functioning RO membrane should be removing 96 to 98% of the tap water TDS so if his tap water is in the national average range of 200- 250 TDS he should be seeing a maximum TDS of between 4 and 10. Thats a far cry from 69.

Heck my tap water TDS when I tested it last Sunday was 552 and my RO only was 3.2, both tested with a calibrated COM-100 handheld meter at 68 psi and 69 degrees F water temp. There is absolutely no reason an RO should be returning a TDS of 69 if you have anywhere near normal tap water.

wow my ro nano from h2o science reads 1-2 on the tds meter,but 69? way to high