# RO water



## charlie (13 Dec 2007)

Does anyone out there still use RO water. There appears to be very little mention of it on any of the forums. I was wondering what products people use to re-build the ro water for their tanks. I currently use SERA mineral salt for trace elemnts and KH increase but would be interested to hear what other people are using.


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## JamesC (13 Dec 2007)

Yep, I use RO water. I just add a bit of tap water to bring GH up to about 5. I also add a bit of magnesium as my tap's GH is all calcium. KH I try to keep low at about 2 to 3.

James


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## Ed Seeley (13 Dec 2007)

I use RO too.  I have Seachem Equilibrium to re-mineralise it but had a few issues with stunting and have now got some more Kent RO right and the problem's gone!


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## Themuleous (13 Dec 2007)

Yeah me too, like James I cut mine with tap water to give around 6GH and 1-2 KH. I find its far cheaper then using remineralizing salts.

Sam


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## fishgeek (14 Dec 2007)

i just use my r/o straight over peat in storage butt then , neat in tank for apisto's
or mixed with tap for plants


assuming 95 efficency of r/o , and my quite hard london tap there is likely still some things left
my fish seemed to liek it then that is what evolution had adapted them to

andrew


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## charlie (29 Dec 2007)

thanks for the replies


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## Jamie (29 Dec 2007)

I use RO water, with TMC tropical remineral added. My tapwater is loaded with all sorts of chemicals. When I used tapwater I had all sorts of problems with algae, now using RO water its not nearly so bad.


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## Terry (9 Jan 2008)

A belated Happy New Year to all UKAPS members.

As users of RO I assume all you guys have your own RO producing units. I'm looking to buy one in the near future and would be grateful for any tips/advice on installation/operation please?

Terry


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## Matt Holbrook-Bull (9 Jan 2008)

I dont use RO, i used to.. and now my plants grow better in the tap water.  Plus, personally, I condiser it an unnecessary environmental strain with huge wastage.  I understand the need to use it in certain tanks with certain breeds of fish, but for a normal planted tank, cant see the need for it unless you live in the States and there horrid.


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## Ed Seeley (9 Jan 2008)

Terry said:
			
		

> A belated Happy New Year to all UKAPS members.
> 
> As users of RO I assume all you guys have your own RO producing units. I'm looking to buy one in the near future and would be grateful for any tips/advice on installation/operation please?
> 
> Terry



I have a 50 gallons per day unit from RO Man and would definitely recommend them.

My product water feeds into a 100 litre slimline water butt and that is fitted with an automatic shut off and, at the bottom, a full flow tap with a ball valve rather than a standard tap.
When I need water I simply open the tap and fill the containers quickly rather than leaving them for hours to produce the water!
All the waste water is used by letting it flow into my koi pond where the slightly higher hardness and nutirents don't matter at all.  Therefore my RO wastes nothing! (In theory!   )
You definitely want to think about using the 'waste' water somehow (either hard water tanks, ponds or watering plants that aren't fussy), though all the RO units in Britain must waste less in a year than the water companies lose in a day through leaks...

Personally I wouldn't be without one as it allows me to keep and breed a wide range of wild, F1 and sensitive species.  I'm experimenting with tap water in my tanks at school and everything seems ok so far, except the duckweed has really taken off in one tank and the Mayaca growth has slowed in the other (though there are a million and one reasons why those changes may have happened, so I'm not at all saying the tap water has definitely caused them) but I doubt the pair of wild angels will breed successfully in it!


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## Dave Spencer (10 Jan 2008)

Does anybody know the conductivity of the product?

Dave.


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## stevet (10 Jan 2008)

..of the product water? Very low from memory - around 20-40 ms (cant do that funny u shaped symbol - microsiemens) on my RO unit. I have very hard input water though so this could be lower on other RO units, also polishing DI units would get this lower i imagine? 

When i reconstituted it with minerals i would aim to get up to 200-300 ms.


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## Dave Spencer (10 Jan 2008)

Hah! Na Na Na Na Na. I can get freebie RO at 0.02 microSiemens/cm. The only problem is, I don`t need it.  

Dave.


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## stevet (10 Jan 2008)

hmmm...ok. Like i said depends on many factors - hardness of water going in, the temperature of that water, mains pressure etc etc. I would be surprised if an RO unit without a DI unit could produce that low a reading and as i remember my TDS/conductivity unit didnt go down to tenths of a microsiemens? That was a Hanna hand held job - widely held to be one of the best hand held units out there, outside of a lab anyway.

You would be welcome to send me the unit and i could prove it one way or the other with London tapwater at barely 1 bar of mains pressure!?


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## Dave Spencer (10 Jan 2008)

Sorry, Steve! I was being flippant.  

I am referring to the water treatment plant at the power staion where I work.

Dave.


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## stevet (10 Jan 2008)

Free RO water - great!?

Just take a few water carriers to work....


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## beeky (11 Jan 2008)

Anyone use rainwater?


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## Dave Spencer (11 Jan 2008)

stevet said:
			
		

> Free RO water - great!?
> 
> Just take a few water carriers to work....



I have very soft tap water, so the only use I have for it is making my own 4dKH solution.

Dave.


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## Tom (11 Jan 2008)

> Anyone use rainwater?



Meee! pH 6.4, KH 0, GH 0, I find it great with a tiny bit of my tapwater. Watch out in built up areas though, it can contain nasty stuff from pollutants.


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## daniel19831123 (16 Apr 2008)

Hmm after reading all these thread about RO water I start wondering if there is any point in using remineralising salt? If you look at the content of all these water conditioner, they only add potassium, calcium, magnesium, and trace element back in the water. Surely if you are dosing with EI, there is no need to add those element back in the water as there is plenty in the fertiliser. Am I wrong in saying this?


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## ceg4048 (16 Apr 2008)

Dosing EI does not automatically add components like Calcium, although you could include Calcium Chloride (CaCl2) or Calcium Sulphate (CaSO4). You could also use GH booster. As far as I can recall anything in these mineralizers can be reproduced so it's not that big of a deal. It's easier and cheaper though to adjust the RO with tap instead of buying more things to remineralize it with (unless your tap is very soft). An advantage of using the commercial products is that the bottle tells you exactly how much product to add to achieve a particular hardness whereas the homegrown stuff has be figured out. This is an advantage if you have a specific kH/GH target for fish, but otherwise there is no need for accuracy, a pinch of this or that will do.

Cheers,


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## daniel19831123 (16 Apr 2008)

The only reason why I don't want to add anything from my tap water to RO water is because I'm afraid there might be some chemical in there that is potentially hazardous to my shrimp. I had bought some crystal red shrimp in the past and they had all died. Initially I thought it was my tank generating too much ammonia due to the amount of organic in the tank so I setup a new tank with matured filter from the previous tank and just akadama for substrate and yet all the shrimp died. So I concluded that there must be something in the water that is causing the shrimp to die. the only one that managed to survived are the japonica. Haven't tried cherry but I think they will survive in this water too.


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## Ed Seeley (17 Apr 2008)

I use pure RO for my tanks as I've had issues with my tap water in the past.  I use a mix of RO Right and Equilibrium as I had some issues with stunting when using Equilibrium on its own (of course it may not have been the cause but coincidence!).  I would re-minerlise with something as you need to add the Calcium and Magnesium somehow so why not do it by adding it when doing water changes?


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## daniel19831123 (17 Apr 2008)

If you are dosing with EI and you've got a supply of magnesium sulphate, calcium sulphate, potassium nitrate, potassium sulphate and trace element, that should pretty much cover everything that is in the commercial product isn't it? I don't know what's wrong at the moment but I'm blaming my water for all my dead shrimp atm as everything else is thriving.


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## Themuleous (18 Apr 2008)

I use RO cut with tap at 1:4.  Remineralising salts were costing me a fortune and I see little need.

I keep meaning to switch to rainwater, but want to fix up an outside plug first so can run an internal in the water butt packed with carbon to reduce impurities/pollutants, etc, just haven't got around to it.

FYI - I've just added a second RO membrane to my unit.  So the waste water gets put through again.  Should increase water producting massively and also reduce water waste, its the worst thing with RO, the waste.  Thank goodness this is a wet country! (Well most of the time )

Sam


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## daniel19831123 (18 Apr 2008)

Is there any other way of connecting RO unit besides making a hole in the incoming water supply tube? I'm renting at the moment and I don't think my landlord will be please to see me drilling a hole and causing flood.


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## Ed Seeley (18 Apr 2008)

daniel19831123 said:
			
		

> If you are dosing with EI and you've got a supply of magnesium sulphate, calcium sulphate, potassium nitrate, potassium sulphate and trace element, that should pretty much cover everything that is in the commercial product isn't it? I don't know what's wrong at the moment but I'm blaming my water for all my dead shrimp atm as everything else is thriving.



But the point is that most people won't be dosing Calcium and Magnesium unless they are adding it to the standard EI mix - it isn't there as most people will get enough Calcium at least through their tap water.  The GH boosters are mainly Ca and MgSO4 (with a good whack of K2SO4 and other trace minerals such as Iron and various others)  So if you add the Calcium and Magnesium to the EI mix then you are basically adding your own version of the GH booster!  As you said the other things are being added by your EI mix.  I think you can safely leave the K2SO4 out as you will get lots of K from the KNO3 and KPO4.

You can sometimes get tap fittings to screw onto taps to fit the RO unit but the saddle valves pierce a small whole in the pipe and if you put it somewhere out the way it'd be hard to notice...


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## Themuleous (20 Apr 2008)

daniel19831123 said:
			
		

> Is there any other way of connecting RO unit besides making a hole in the incoming water supply tube? I'm renting at the moment and I don't think my landlord will be please to see me drilling a hole and causing flood.



I connect mine up to the outside tap using a hozeloc connector.  I wasn't to keen on putting a hope in my pipes either.

Sam


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## daniel19831123 (20 Apr 2008)

So I'm assuming that if you are moving house, you just leave the saddle piercing kit on the tube and screw it off and just take the RO unit with you? Do I need to switch off the main prior to connecting? I came across this webpage which shows the step by step installation.

http://www.melevsreef.com/rodi_install.html

this guy has obviously shut his main supply off as he took the piercing kit off the pipe after piercing it. Can I connect all the required tubing prior to piercing and just pierced it and run the whole thing through? I'm very tempted to just do that if it's that's small and un-noticeable. My faucet doesn't really comply to the norm and I see no way of connecting it to an adaptor. 






All the adaptor I found online have mentioned about male or female thread. As far as I can tell there is no thread on this one. It's so old and there was so much calcification in there that I can't feel a thing. (It felt disgusting too!) 

http://www.ro-man.com/shop/product_info ... cts_id/300

I found this adaptor on Ro-man webpage but don't think it will fit to mine even using the jubilee type clip as my faucet is squarish and I'm pretty sure there'll be plenty of leakage around. Will be heading into the local homebase or focus tomorrow and see if I can find any adaptor to suit this faucet.


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## daniel19831123 (20 Apr 2008)

And I've also came across another question while debating within myself if I should get a remineraliser. What happen to the carbonate in the tap water when it goes through RO? I assumed that it will be removed from the water and hence the soft water. Assuming that one is remineralising using different salt as if he/she is dosing for a planted tank, would the water ph be stable when CO2 is injected in it? There will no longer be any carbonate in the water to buffer the system. One might be adding Calcium to the water but if it's calcium sulphate, it will only add the the gH and not the kH. Am I right in saying this?


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## ceg4048 (20 Apr 2008)

Dan,
         As you say, carbonates don't have anything to do with the water being hard, although high carbonates often accompany hard water. Carbonates affect the alkalinity of the water, or it's buffering ability. The hardness in water is due to the Calcium and Magnesium. An RO filter can be though of as than a filter with a "mesh" size more or less the same size as a water molecule. All molecules or particles the same size or smaller get through the mesh. All particles of larger size get trapped in the net. If you have a target kH you can just add baking soda to raise the kH, or you can add a small amount of tap water back in. I don't think it's necessary though. When you start adding CO2 the pH will fall as it does normally but the final ph value will be low compared to if you were injecting into tap water. So the ph in a CO2 injected tank is not stable anyway as the gas goes on and off. This is not really a big deal.

Cheers,


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## Ed Seeley (20 Apr 2008)

I fitted my saddle valve with the water still turned on and there was no problem at all.  Like you say, when you leave then you'd leave the saddle valve (or needle clamp) in place and simply get another one.

The other fittings would screw onto a tap like an outside garden tap, not a domestic one.  I think you'll be best with the needle or saddle valve.

As to KH, as Clive says, isn't really that big a deal.  I run my tanks at home on pure RO water remineralised with a small amount (1 teaspoon per 25 litres) of RO Right or Equilibirum which means I end up with about 3dGH and 0dKH.  I've never had a "ph crash" (if such a thing really happens) and lost fish.  And I really don't think I've been lucky.  pH swings with addition or lack of CO2 and the fish carry on breeding and swimming happily (I do keep exclusively soft water loving fish though).


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## daniel19831123 (20 Apr 2008)

Just bought an 50GPD 3 stage RO unit from RO-man. Decided to use the needle clamp. I sure hope it work out as what I have plan in my head. It would be a nightmare if it starts leaking as I have no idea where the main shut off in this house is. I've tried looking.


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## Ed Seeley (20 Apr 2008)

daniel19831123 said:
			
		

> Just bought an 50GPD 3 stage RO unit from RO-man. Decided to use the needle clamp. I sure hope it work out as what I have plan in my head. It would be a nightmare if it starts leaking as I have no idea where the main shut off in this house is. I've tried looking.



Good choice.  That's the unit I have.  I would locate your shut off first though, just in case!  There is usually a tap in the kitchen not far from the sink or if you have a garage nearby it may be there.  It'll just be a small stopcock tap, easy to overlook!


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## daniel19831123 (20 Apr 2008)

I'll be using it my room as there is a sink here. Been looking inside and outside and even in storage room. There is a few boxes that's lock and one of them had 2 pipes coming out of it. I'm pretty darn sure that's where the shut off is. hacking into that box would be the last thing I want to do.

Edit : Found the freaking tap turn off! Who would have guess it's hidden right behind the toilet seat in the toilet downstairs! I swear that's why my water taste funny.... nauseaus now.....


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## Themuleous (21 Apr 2008)

Just a quick comment about remineralising the RO.  Use tap, the remineralising things are expensive and I found the Kent one was way off when I followed the guide.  It gave me a completely different TDS from that stated.  Use tap water instead, it adds all the good things back in and its dirt cheap.

Sam


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## daniel19831123 (21 Apr 2008)

Well when you keep CRS with your tap water and you ended up lossing nearly thousands of pound.... I think you wouoldn't want to add anything in your tap into your RO.   I think I will stick to remineralising with my salts


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## Themuleous (21 Apr 2008)

Haha fair Hugh!!  Guess its all a matter of cost v benefit, re-remineralising salts are cheap if you risk losing that much stock!

Sam


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## daniel19831123 (21 Apr 2008)

bought 18 SS/SSS grade CRS and 40 A grade CRS. Plonk them in the tank thinking it's matured and I'm keeping up with my tank maintenence and it should be alright. Within 1 day I lose 50% of it. by the end of 2 weeks I'm left with 1 A grade. well you go work the maths. It kills me to think about the figures


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## Themuleous (21 Apr 2008)

Oh crap   

Sam


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## Garuf (21 Apr 2008)

And my luck with inverts is as bad, I'm into Â£70 territory of inverts that are getting bumped of by Stoke regions water.


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## Themuleous (21 Apr 2008)

I dont follow gareth?  they die and you dump them in the loo?


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## Garuf (21 Apr 2008)

Nooo, both me and Dan live in roughly the same area and both of us can't keep inverts in our tap water, something in it kills them. 

Nothing to do with toilets.


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## Themuleous (21 Apr 2008)

OH RIGHT!!!   I did wonder!  Haha

Sam


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## daniel19831123 (21 Apr 2008)

Damn the water here. Didn't expect to lose one month worth of salary by dumping it into the water!


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## phillarrow (18 May 2008)

A few weeks ago I made the switch to 100% RO water and have been delighted with the results. My fish are extremely healthy, plants growing well and all shrimp are doing great. I'm even lucky (or unlucky depending upon your point of view) in that something in my tanks, almost certainly the black sand, is raising both GH and KH so I start the week with readings of 4 and 3 and finish it with 7 and 6 so I simply use 100% RO as my change water and it brings it back down. 
Personally I wouldn't use tap water at all for any kind of fish simply because the parameters considered acceptable by the water companies are outside of what I would accept as safe for fish in many cases. Also, water companies can change the make up of your water overnight and have do not have to tell you. You wouldn't buy fish, take them home and dump them straight into your tank without acclimatising first and, with the large water changes many of us do, using tap water could be akin to doing just that.
Finally, when doing a recent project in school with my students on water quality we came across statements like "96% of all water supplied is within proven safety parameters". Sounds great at first but I read this as "4% of households receiving poisonous water". As far as I'm concerned our tap water could be poisonous and I won't subject my fish to it - even my Malawi tank gets 100% RO now although it's going to cost me a fortune in salts.


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## ceg4048 (19 May 2008)

phillarrow said:
			
		

> .... it's going to cost me a fortune in salts...



Yes, unfortunately that's the most convincing reason of all to use tap water, not to mention the time and energy required to produce the water.      Some prefer to spend their fortune on more plants/gadgets etc. I read an article of a test result which  some time ago that indicated London tap water is healthier to drink than any of the bottled spring waters, especially the "designer" waters. Scored quite low on the taste survey though.   Anyone who thinks England's tap water is poisonous should try living in The Ukraine.  

Cheers,


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## daniel19831123 (19 May 2008)

Well I'm using 100% RO water for my crsytal red shrimp tank now and I've managed to keep my SS grade CRS and CBS alive for over 2 weeks! Previously all the shrimp will die within 5 days. I don't remineralised with over the shelf product, instead I'm using fert to remineralise the water. Calcium sulphate and magnesium sulphate + trace mix. Seemed to be doing the trick and my fish and invert seemed to be healthy and grazing away. Even the plant looks better. Too bad I've got to move in 3 months time and I need to look for a place where I can get access to the brass pipe   So far all the luxury apartment I've seen tend to have the pipe work install behind covers. It'll be pretty obvious is I make a hole in the wall to get my RO water. lol


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## Ed Seeley (21 May 2008)

You can use 100% RO water and save yourself a fortune in salt for your Malawis in two ways:
First, make sure you have some aragonite in your tank which will dissolve once the pH drops to below 8 and will buffer GH, KH and pH.
Second, get a container to put your RO water in with a stocking or filter media bag full of aragonite in it and leave it filled between water changes to gradually harden the water for you!  Then, for the price of some aragonite and a water container, you can have all the hard, very pure water you need!  Perfect for rifts.

I use 100% RO at home and would never switch back, even if I do set up another Tanganyikan tank.


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