can you drink RO/DI?

[Capt_kulafu]

hello my fellow reefers

Is drinking RO/DI water bad for you?

[Delphinus]

RO is most certainly OK.

Have heard that too much RO/DI is not too good. I'm sure small amounts are not too harmful but having said that, I'm not sure it tastes very nice (well it probably has as close to "zero taste" as water can get :lol: )

[Capt_kulafu]

how about if i purchase a RO unit is it good to the reef tank?

[Polscot]

ro/di water is essentially the purest for of water u can get, it has pretty much 0 in it, it imo tastes good, and yes its healty, alot of those wierd vegan non meat eaters :) hehe drink it, it is most certainly the best water for a reef tank also, alot of the stuff in normal tap water will cause algae blooms and mass diatoms, so yes to both bud

[Capt_kulafu]

thanks polscot

[Lampshade]

Apperently if you've drank tap water mostly before, drinking RO/DI is pretty miuch tasteless. Most people don't like it, since we've gotten used to the taste of the chlorine and stuff in the tap water. I tried it, tastes like air?. Probably good for you striaght from the RO/DI, I'm not sure about how good it would be after a few days of stuff getting in it. They don't add chlorine just for fun to our water, it's to stop bacteria growning.

[Dive_dry]

bottle water is RO water

[hillbillyreefer]

I've been drinking it for decades, hasn't hurt me yet. It makes the best coffee you can make.

[Bloodasp]

I have started to drink RO/DI water since I installed it a couple of months ago. Haven't seen any bad effects yet. It actually tastes better than just filtered water from what I noticed.

[daniella3d]

It totaly lack mineral so drinking too much of it will be detrimental to your health yes. We do need some mineral salt or we could be poisoned by water if we swet and the mineral are not replaced.

So it'S ok if you drink mineral in other manner but if you do exercice, swet a lot and drink a lot of RODI water it would be bad for you. Do a search on water poisoning in google.

Nothing can live in RODI water, not even discus. They would die eventualy.

hello my fellow reefers

Is drinking RO/DI water bad for you?

[Aquaria]

well in my interweb searches iv found that drinking it can acually effect your intakes of certin vitamins that come in water since the water is stripped of everything. im sure u could offset this by taking vitamins and drinking milk though. this is all based off of internet reading :P but IMHO, no you shouldent drink it

[ScubaSteve]

The #1 lab procedure we have for RO/DI is: don't drink it. You can drink it but you actually leach minerals from your body. Most home RO units won't bring your water down to totally zero so it's not as big of a deal but if it's really pure water, like what you'd get from a Milli-Q unit, you can start doing some damage. It's not going to kill you or anything but it ain't good.

I actually own a company that is developing a process to compete with RO for drinking water (mostly in rural areas and urban settings without infrastructure). We CAN drive the output water to absolute zero but no one wants to drink that water and I actually have had to design it to leave behind some of the good stuff while removing all thebad stuff.

bottle water is RO water

No it ain't. Sorry, not trying to be a jerk but you should really look into that a bit. Very few companies actually do that as it is so damn expensive.

[Sebae again]

I compensate my intake of RO water with beer.

[darb]

be careful not to drink too much H2O, you can get intoxicated from water also ...

[fkshiu]

Phhhphht, big time urban myth. RO/DI water becomes "regular" water the moment it touches your lips. It's not some kind of vampire water.

You get the vast majority of minerals from the food you eat. A few cups of RO/DI won't kill you. It just tastes bad.

Perhaps if you ingested nothing but gallons of RO/DI for weeks on end you'd have a problem, but your problems would be caused by the fact that you haven't eaten more than the water itself.

[Wayne]

Phhhphht, big time urban myth. RO/DI water becomes "regular" water the moment it touches your lips. It's not some kind of vampire water.

You get the vast majority of minerals from the food you eat. A few cups of RO/DI won't kill you. It just tastes bad.

Perhaps if you ingested nothing but gallons of RO/DI for weeks on end you'd have a problem, but your problems would be caused by the fact that you haven't eaten more than the water itself.

+1 What possible minerals do you want from regular tap water? Copper, Lead, Arsenic, not to mention so many more minerals that are harmful to your health. Even though RO water will remove minerals from your body, you get proper organic minerals that will actually disolve in your body from the food you eat. I do like the taste of tap water but RO water is safe to drink.

[cwatkins]

No point here in vancouver. The water from the tap is pretty darn good.

And unless it came right out of the RO/DI unit, i'm not so sure about it once it's sat in jugs for a few days. Most places put some ozone in those jugs for a reason.

Vancouver now boasts the purest tap water in the world—so why are you still drinking bottled?:
http://www.granvilleonline.ca/gr/blogs/editors/2010/03/15/what-you039re-too-good-our-water

[daniella3d]

Guys, it's only a problem if you sweat a lot and you drink RODI water, then you will lose minerals (sweat is salty!) and if you don't compensate that loss with some electrolite (like in Gatorade) then you can get water poisoning.

"Any activity or situation that promotes heavy sweating can lead to water intoxication when water is consumed to replace lost fluids. Persons working in extreme heat and/or humidity for long periods must take care to drink and eat in ways that help to maintain electrolyte balance."

Personaly I would not drink RODI water but I drink filtered water with a filter that remove all the toxic stuff but not all of the good stuff.

Best water I ever drink was from some lakes in the Sierra Nevada in California, 10,000 feet elevation and filtered with a ceramic filter for hiking. That tasted awesome!

+1 What possible minerals do you want from regular tap water? Copper, Lead, Arsenic, not to mention so many more minerals that are harmful to your health. Even though RO water will remove minerals from your body, you get proper organic minerals that will actually disolve in your body from the food you eat. I do like the taste of tap water but RO water is safe to drink.

[randallino]

I have a RO line for our drinking and cooking water, I prefer it to bottled any day.

[Rogue951]

We may have the purest water in the world, but the pipes leading to your household tap from that pure source are anything but.
Wasn't it on the news a while ago some people were complaining their old water feed pipes were contaminating their water?
Personally, love tap water. haha. Vancouver special only.



No point here in vancouver. The water from the tap is pretty darn good.

And unless it came right out of the RO/DI unit, i'm not so sure about it once it's sat in jugs for a few days. Most places put some ozone in those jugs for a reason.

Vancouver now boasts the purest tap water in the world—so why are you still drinking bottled?:
http://www.granvilleonline.ca/gr/blogs/editors/2010/03/15/what-you039re-too-good-our-water

[sphelps]

Guys, it's only a problem if you sweat a lot and you drink RODI water, then you will lose minerals (sweat is salty!) and if you don't compensate that loss with some electrolite (like in Gatorade) then you can get water poisoning.

"Any activity or situation that promotes heavy sweating can lead to water intoxication when water is consumed to replace lost fluids. Persons working in extreme heat and/or humidity for long periods must take care to drink and eat in ways that help to maintain electrolyte balance."

Personaly I would not drink RODI water but I drink filtered water with a filter that remove all the toxic stuff but not all of the good stuff.

Best water I ever drink was from some lakes in the Sierra Nevada in California, 10,000 feet elevation and filtered with a ceramic filter for hiking. That tasted awesome!

Actually the same rules apply to tap water as well. If you want to avoid this you should drink bottled mineral water. Tap water is not mineral water, it may have minerals but they aren't necessarily the correct type.

IMO you shouldn't drink tap water in most cities, some are OK depending on how close you are to the source but most not so good. When I lived in Saskatoon a study showed many areas to have 3-5 times the allowable lead content in the tap water. Calgary claims they add fluoride to help your teeth while the dentist makes sure you don't swallow any fluoride during the routine treatment :lol: Then there's the chloramine with is what is now used instead of chlorine since chlorine breaks down two easily. Chloramine is ammonia bonded and doesn't break down, all those aerators on your taps are now fairly useless.
For the amount of so called "good" things in city water there are too many bad things for me personally. In Calgary and Saskatoon the source of the water comes from rivers, the city advices the water from the rivers are safe to drink but don't eat any fish from them.
Many things within the water have been linked to cancer as well which we all know is a very common disease while most of us have never heard of water poisoning due to a lack of minerals.

I currently drink RO water but previously it was RODI which can taste funny to some but it's harmless. If you like the taste then go nuts, if not try a final taste and odor filter on your system or remove the DI. You can also tee into your filter right before the DI stage and use that for drinking (just make sure the storage tank is also tee'd in before the DI) and leave the output from the DI strictly for the aquarium.
It's sometimes recommended not to drink DI water because DI alone does not remove bacteria or pathogens. When it's added to a RO system this is no longer a concern.

[mike31154]

Since getting my RODI system a couple of years ago, I've been using RO for drinking, making coffee & tea etc. It's great. When I go play soccer, I use RO water to mix up some Gatorade, so I reckon that replaces many of the minerals I may lose working up a sweat, it's an electrolyte after all. sphelps brings up some very valid points in his post. Often general statements made by the so called health experts make their way into our mindset and we don't bother checking our local sources or conditions, or use some common sense in relation to what these health experts are feeding us. I've checked the water reports provided by the city of Vernon on a number of occasions to determine what's actually in the water they're sending down the pipe to my home. It's drinkable according to current standards and hopefully the folks keeping an eye on this regularly are doing their job. But remember Walkerton and don't take things for granted. We're ahead of the game with our RODI systems so why not use RO water for our daily consumption? It's the same as bottled and nutritional/mineral requirements are easily supplemented with the plethora of health products marketed to us these days. It's the same principle we use for our marine tanks, use water stripped of everything, mix with salt and supplement minerals & trace elements to keep our critters healthy.

PS. If you have a spare CO2 bottle kicking around, get a tire valve, integrate it into the cap of a two liter plastic pop bottle and you can make your own carbonated water or even soft drinks with RO water. Tastes awesome. I snagged a used 10lb tank some time ago and make my own bubbly. Don't use a calcium reactor so the CO2 bottle is a dedicated pop machine.

[mark]

I love the internet, where else can you put common sense aside and keep a myth going around and around.

[randallino]

Too much minerals are a bad thing...kidney, bladder stones. Ouch!

[mike31154]

I love the internet, where else can you put common sense aside and keep a myth going around and around.

Indeed, but on the pro side, we now also have easy access to things like water reports which would have been a bit of a chore before the interweb.

[Zoaelite]

well in my interweb searches iv found that drinking it can acually effect your intakes of certin vitamins that come in water since the water is stripped of everything. im sure u could offset this by taking vitamins and drinking milk though. this is all based off of internet reading :P but IMHO, no you shouldent drink it

Stop believing stuff on the internet (Haha Iroonnnyyyy), there are no vitamins in tap water. Vitamins are organic compounds produced biologically, you don't find them in tap water only in them in the food you eat. This myth about having to drink tap water to get your mineral content/ vitamins is unbelievably wrong.

A single 50g serving of Swiss cheese contains 480 mg of Calcium which equates to about 1.19 e-2 mols of calcium or 7,211976048000000000000 molecules (7.2e21). Calgary water has 200 ppm of dissolved minerals (Including Calcium, Magnesium, sodium...). 50 mL of water is 50g, at 200 ppm 0.02% of that is minerals or 0.01g, this means that there are about 2.49e-4 mols of minerals or 1.49e20 molecules (using the heavier weight of calcium to calculate).

What does it all mean Basil!
Well for every 1 calcium molecule in cheese there are 0.02 dissolved hardness molecules in water (again this includes Calcium, Magnesium, Sodium, Potassium...). So you would have to drink 2.5L of water to match 50g of cheese and I'm still comparing apples to oranges here as that's pure calcium in cheese and an accumulation of all hardness minerals in water.

The major advantage to drinking RO water is that you know it's ONLY water, a proper RO unit will filter out not only all the minerals but containment such as chlorine, chloramine, VOC, bacteria, viruses, lead and anything else your worried about.

Don't listen to me though, my opinion is bias as I used to sell these units. :razz:.

[BC564]

ok...Calgary does not use Chloramine to disinfect.......

[sphelps]

ok...Calgary does not use Chloramine to disinfect.......
Correct but many other cities do, including (as far I know) Edmonton and Saskatoon.

[freezetyle]

be careful not to drink too much H2O, you can get intoxicated from water also ...

define too much water. I shoot to drink about a gallon of water a day and i know many athletes that will drink up to two gallons per day. Most people do not drink enough fluids as it is. coffee, pop, caffeinated drinks, booze, etc. do not count of course

[Aquaria]

first off ill say i don't believe everything i read and second there is NO proof as to it being good OR bad thats why i said IMHO i wouldn't drink it. there still to much debate as to it being healthy or not for me to drink it, i want some concrete evidence before i pour a glass. you say that theres no evidence that its bad well i say theres no evidence that its good either again IMHO

[DiverDude]

I agree with ScubaSteve. However, pretty much anything in moderation isn't going to affect you one way or the other.

To add to this, since I suspect there have been an underlying thought in the original question, I use my RO/DI system for more than just my tank. OK, the tank was the reason to get it but I also rationalized getting rid of Culligan (bought the cooler off them for $50) -and that saves me $.

For the water we drink, I've put 2 valves in the system and I cut out the DI stage of the system when making drinking water. I also use this water when I make wine.

I also use RO/DI for filling all our humidifiers.

For me, buying the system was a no brainer -it pays for itself over and over again.

[BC564]

Im not sure about Saskatoon but I believe they are using Chlorine gas and carrier water injection....waiting for them to get back to me.....Edmonton uses Sodium Hypochlorite to produce there own mixture which comes out at Approx. 12% solution..... all facililties also use UV disinfection to add to their total log removal which is an Alberta environment regulation which varies according to plant classification.....The filters removal most, if not all, cysts of Crypto and gardia........just to be sure they use the UV at the end of the process to kill any that may get through and also inject final Chlorine solution for distribution. Oh..just found out the Saskatoon uses Chlorine gas. So using the RO water to drink will remove the Chlorine taste and floride if you dont want those...but drinking RO water is exactly what your drinking when you buy a bottle of bottled water unless its marked as spring water or Distilled. RO water is not as harsh as distilled water for depleting minerals in your body from sweating. If you want to help remove Chlorine and bacteria then install a UV sterilizer in front of your RODI to help it....as UV light removes chlorine.

[sphelps]

Q10 & 13 on this page (http://www.saskatoon.ca/DEPARTMENTS/Utility%20Services/Water%20and%20Wastewater%20Treatment/Water%20Treatment%20Plant/Pages/Frequently%20Asked%20Questions.aspx#chemicals)

Chlorine and ammonia are added to Saskatoon tap water, so it does contain chloramine

[BC564]

Correct....free chlorine is added prefilters.........ammonia is added to the filter effluent which does produce Chloramines. This is for Saskatoon only.

[Delphinus]

How does UV light remove chlorine?

[sphelps]

Correct....free chlorine is added prefilters.........ammonia is added to the filter effluent which does produce Chloramines. This is for Saskatoon only.
You're saying Saskatoon is the only city that has Chloramine in their water?

[Cranky When Wet]

Stop believing stuff on the internet (Haha Iroonnnyyyy), there are no vitamins in tap water. Vitamins are organic compounds produced biologically, you don't find them in tap water only in them in the food you eat. This myth about having to drink tap water to get your mineral content/ vitamins is unbelievably wrong.

A single 50g serving of Swiss cheese contains 480 mg of Calcium which equates to about 1.19 e-2 mols of calcium or 7,211976048000000000000 molecules (7.2e21). Calgary water has 200 ppm of dissolved minerals (Including Calcium, Magnesium, sodium...). 50 mL of water is 50g, at 200 ppm 0.02% of that is minerals or 0.01g, this means that there are about 2.49e-4 mols of minerals or 1.49e20 molecules (using the heavier weight of calcium to calculate).

What does it all mean Basil!
Well for every 1 calcium molecule in cheese there are 0.02 dissolved hardness molecules in water (again this includes Calcium, Magnesium, Sodium, Potassium...). So you would have to drink 2.5L of water to match 50g of cheese and I'm still comparing apples to oranges here as that's pure calcium in cheese and an accumulation of all hardness minerals in water.

The major advantage to drinking RO water is that you know it's ONLY water, a proper RO unit will filter out not only all the minerals but containment such as chlorine, chloramine, VOC, bacteria, viruses, lead and anything else your worried about.

Don't listen to me though, my opinion is bias as I used to sell these units. :razz:.

Love your "biased" opinion and sound, logical, good sense! Yeah, I really want to swill chloramine to get an atomic particle of a mineral I get reams of by eating a handful of raw almonds or a whack of nice, dark green, leafy things. As for electrolytes, I rather like what many Canadian athletes are doing: chug back a glass of coconut water! It's loaded with medium-chain triglycerides that are converted by your liver immediately, and effortlessly, for that much-needed energy... Of course, it's hard to say what kind of water said coconut is floating in... arrrrgh... again, we need to make our own to be really safe!

Needless to say... clean water is a luxury for most of the world now. Enjoy it if you can. It's your body and your choice.

I fully support drinking, and using, the absolutely, cleanest, purest water I can get.

'Nuff said, :laluot_27: Bunny >:-)

[BC564]

NO I am saying that Edmonton doesn't as you listed those two together....Chloramine final solution is huge in the states.....

[lastlight]

It's a well-documented FACT that ro/di water will literally leech the BONES right out of your body. I know a lot of big-boned people drink upwards of 2L/day and some have now landed modeling contracts.

Knowledge is key everyone. Educate yourselves and GET SEXY!

[sphelps]

NO I am saying that Edmonton doesn't as you listed those two together....Chloramine final solution is huge in the states.....
I'm pretty sure they do, everywhere I look tends to say so anyway. Where do you get all your info from?

http://www.freeh2otesting.com/chloramination.htm

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ewh-semt/pubs/water-eau/chloramines/index-eng.php

http://www.nrsc.ca/print.php?news.8

http://www.aquasanacanada.com/Water-FAQs-sp-11.html

[BC564]

Actually Sphelps...I have to apologize..... I was just having a discussion on it...and Edmonton does produce Chloramines....so I stand corrrected.....they are using Sodium Hypo solution for their free chlorine but they are also adding ammonia to the plant distribution system...so Edmonton is on the chloramine list.......and so is Red Deer..........Victoria........Wetaskiwin........

But Calgary definitely does not.

[sphelps]

Agreed, but they probably will be soon, especially as the city continues to grow.

[BC564]

My Info? I just sat my butt in the office of the guy that designed the plant......when in doubt......go to the top..

[MitchM]

For you people that are using your R/O units for drinking - are you also sanitizing the R/O unit at least every 6 months?
If not, you should start. Bacteria will accumulate in your systems.
We have a separate R/O unit for our drinking water here (we're on a well) and the instructions state that sanitization every 3 - 6 months is recommended.


Mitch

[howdy20012002]

I am pretty sure that most, if not all, stores that have the fill stations for the bottled waters plants use RO filtres on the water they sell (they don't have artisian wells beneath each and every superstore..lol)....so based on that, I dont' really see how it could be medically bad for you.
just my 2 cents
Neal

[Aquaria]

its not about the RO water as RO is drinkable its pretty well the DI as people don't deionize there water in any stores that sell drinking water its only RO with a UV sterilizer or at least thats what safeways water is anyway

[Capt_kulafu]

RO is good for fish too?

[Aquaria]

yes it is i used ro water from safway for a long time while running my old bow front but i still had nurtrient problems (idk if it was because it wasnot deionized) so i felt it was neccesarry to buy a ro/di unit but for more then any other reason it saved me money buying water

[Capt_kulafu]

my question if you have a RO/DI for reef there is a switch for RO drinking only?

thanks

[cwatkins]

my question if you have a RO/DI for reef there is a switch for RO drinking only?

thanks
T off of it before the DI cartridge.... (usually 1/4" compression fittings from Home Depot)

Edit: You'll probably need to invest in some additional hardware though to make it all work smoothly...