One thing about this hobby(infatuation) is it always finds a way to throw a curve ball at you and leaves you wondering what the hell you got yourself into

On another note I love your tank I salivate every time I see pictures of it I can only hope to one day be in your league(shameless buttering you up)

My DI instructions say that an odor means the DI is fully depleted. They call it a "fishy" smell.

Thanks!

Ya, I guess part of my problem was that I'm quite used to fishy smells around the house. But as I said, another lesson learned! I won't make that mistake a third time.

Well, your pics from a couple months ago sure look good! Hope it gets back to that, and even better soon. Want to see more pics again, then. And I envy anyone with a peninsula tank...

All things considered, it actually wasn't that bad. In other words, it could have been a lot worse. Thankfully no fish were lost, all my LPS and clams came out unscathed as well. Just my most delicate (ie expensive) SPS were hit, figures. But most importantly, I did not lose one single blue clove polyp, thank God !

lmao!

Wow those are some awesome pics!

sorry to hear about the slight trouble but the tank looks Great Kien.

Jeepers, you wouldn't know by those pics that you'd lost any corals

Keep up the good work Kien ! Your journal inspired me and I'm sure manny others to get serious about reefing . :thumb:

DI saga continues..
 

thanks everyone !

So ya, my DI saga continues.. It all started this evening when I went to my RO/DI reservoir to make another batch of NSW (New Salt Water) for a water change. Immediately I could smell that rotten smell that I mentioned in my previous update. This is odd because I just replaced my filters (Sediment, Carbon and DI) barely a month ago. I went on a testing spree and turned up some interesting but not surprising results..

Here's the TDS reading coming out of my RO membrane.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...pstygnlesg.jpg

7 TDS. Not bad and fairly normal I'd say.

Now here's the TDS going out of my 1 month old DI resin.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...psnpcltoan.jpg

31 TDS. Whoa, that's definitely not zero. And as I mentioned, the water stinks. Literally stinks, like rotten eggs. I have to admit the smell can be a bit subtle so some people may not notice it. And as I've mentioned previously, I have had this stinky water before and now that I think back in retrospect, each time I had this smelly water issue I had coral issues. That's not really a surprise either because I can't even begin to imagine what nastiness I was dumping into my tank with this water. What surprised me is how quickly the water went from Zero TDS from one batch to 31 TDS in the next batch with rotten smelly water. I literally have a couple of 5g buckets of fresh RO/DI water that I made last weekend (I leave them near the tank to fill my top off reservoir) and both of those buckets read ZERO TDS.

At any rate, I took out my DI canister (and left it out), replaced my carbon filter, flushed the membrane for a bit, deep cleaned my 50g RO reservoir and proceeded to make water again. Here's the TDS coming out of my DI-less RO unit.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...pswungawtr.jpg

I think I'm going to live without DI for a while and see if there are any adverse effects. I know of people who don't use DI and after my episode(s) I'm leaning towards that route myself. I can live with 2-7 TDS if it keeps me from DI dumping nasty crap into my tank (even by accident). Another plus is the savings!

On a final note, guys.. do you know how hard it is to deep clean a rain barrel when you're a Hobbit with t-rex arms??

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...psmzcevdc3.jpg

I dont have di on my ro and it always reads 0. I have a di canister but havnt felt the need to install it since my readings are consistantly zero. I personally have never had an issue with just ro. And at one point before ro it was reading 235 and still was only 1 after ro

No DI in Calgary huh ... hmm, interesting

Where's the pics of the T-rex reaching for the bottom of the drum ??? :smile:
Good luck with that

Looking forward to some results without your DI connected ...

But what's your incoming water reading regularly ?

Sometimes they, in Calgary, get huge readings (by Vancouver standards) of up to 7-800ppm if I remember correctly
They need DI :wink:

The water out here in abbotsford seems to fluctuate quite a bit, iv seen from 2ppm up to 340ppm. I would say on an average its probably about 7-10ppm though. I never really considered water in calgary, but if he said he was only getting 2ppm after RO minus DI I would think that would be ok no?

I know of a few calgarians who don't DI. I've tested my tap a few times throughout the year(s) and have at most seen TDS at 175 ? Certainly never seen TDS higher than 200 !! We have major major run off and snow melt (flooding in some areas) right now and I just tested my tap, TDS 149.

Does the water stink as you are making it ? Or after its been sitting for a few days.
Is it in a sealed bucket while etc.

Ya the smell seems to be coming right out of the RO/DI unit. When I took out the DI and put it in the sink in the bathroom I cold smell the DI resin. My freshwater reservoir is covered and mostly sealed. That last batch I made was just last night so it wasn't sitting around for long.

I only run RO, incoming on my last batch was around 127, 0 coming out. I think you'd be fine without it! I'll be changing my filters before the next batch, only thing that should change is production time....:biggrin:

Nice! My sediment filter is probably overdue and if I replace that I wonder if my output would drop from 2 to zero. Not that a TDS of 2 is anything to worry about. I'm just happy that my water doesn't stink :lol: Seriously, I just Googled "smelly Di resin" and apparently it's pretty common. :neutral:

I also use RO. 4ppm out of the unit and I don't consider that to be the end of the world :razz: Tap water generally runs around 150ppm but I am noticing strong chlorine smell in the water today and its now 200ppm.

Where are you getting your DI resin? My system has been on line for 6 plus years & I've only changed the resin once so far. Took over 3 years to exchaust it. Don't recall any foul smell. Incoming TDS here is around 170 and my 75 gpd RO gets that down to 0 during the cold months after running for approximately 10 minutes. In the warmer months once the incoming water gets above about 10 degrees C, I still get RO of 1 with similar incoming TDS. Source for my water is generally from Kalamalka Lake intake & incoming TDS is fairly consistent.

Greater Vernon has spent millions in the past few years upgrading water treatment plants. Our water rates reflect the spending & now due to more stringent health requirements mandated by IHA, they're looking at spending millions more! I do recall several times during algae blooms in the lake (springtime I think), they switched my source to Duteau Creek which they spent megabucks on a few years ago. When that happened, my incoming TDS dropped to below 50! Much softer water from the creek than from the lake. IIRC anything up to 500 TDS is deemed fit for human consumption. Over that and your supplier has to issue a boil water warning or shut down the source.

If you care for a longer read, here's an old post where I go on and on about how I run my RODI system to get the best performance out of it:
http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...590#post842590

I must be confusing your guys' water with the Prairies peoples'

I've heard of this problem before. Where did you get your DI from?

I've always gotten my DI resin from local fish stores and from different stores.

What I wonder now is if bad DI is the source of a lot of problems for tanks but some people can't/don't smell it. Over four years I can think of 4 times my DI has smelled and two of those times it was very very subtle and could easily be masked by the fishy smell of a fish tank, sump or skimmer. Once I remember it smelling bad while still outputting zero TDS which baffles me. It's possible the smell is attributed to something that isn't detected by the TDS meter? :noidea:

Do you let the produced water reading get to zero before you start put it in your storage bin? I usually have to let mine run for 10 minutes before it gets to 0ppm.

Just guessing, but odours are generally gaseous. TDS meters designed to detect solids, no? Ergo TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) meter not able to detect gas? Have you been consuming a lot of Mexican food with plenty of beans the night before messing with your DI media? Sauerkraut or excessive garlic consumption?

As mentioned, I've not detected a foul odour from my DI media, nor experienced coral die off that I could possibly attribute to funky DI product water. Of course I've only opened the canister once in 4 years to replace it. Original media was colour changing & was already loaded in the cartridge out of the box on delivery. I saved it in a plastic container in the basement, opened & smelled it a minute ago. Still moist & absolutely no odour. Batch I replaced it with is non colour changing nuclear grade DI media ordered from Buckeye Field Supply (now Buckeye Hydro). If I were you I'd consider investigating alternate sources rather than those local fish stores, or at least question where they're getting it.

I understand there is a way to recharge exhausted DI media, but after looking into it & the caustic chemicals required to do so, I'm kind of ok with buying a fresh batch, particularly since the stuff is lasting me 3-4 years.

Holy crap your DI lasted 6 years?!?! My last one died in under a month LOL. The longest I've ever had DI going was 8 months maybe..

And ya, it was taco night.. I will try cutting back but that's going to be hard.

Just under 3 & 1/2 years actually. RODI system was new in 15 April 2009 & I changed the DI media & carbon block 07 August 2012 after the TDS was reading 1 at the output of the DI stage.

I've been keeping track of water production on an Excel spreadsheet since day 1 and when I changed the DI & carbon I reckon I'd run about 15,200.5 US gallons through it. This number is based on gallons RO produced + gallons DI produced + waste water produced. The waste water production is calculated by multiplying RO+DI production by 4. By adding the RO+DI production to the waste, you get a good approximation of total gallons throughput based on a 1 to 4 product to waste ratio, which is what most RO membranes are designed to. It also allows me to approximate when my 20,000 gallon rated carbon block is nearing it's rated life.

https://tsl4pa.dm2301.livefilestore....DI2.jpg?psid=1

The link I provided about 5 posts earlier provides some theories on why I may be getting such longevity from my DI based on personal experience with a source water TDS of between 160 to 190. It's a long read, but may help you get more out of your system. To condense what I consider the more important points from that link:

-Manual flush for a few minutes before & after each production run.

-First 1/2 gallon or so after start up in my experience is pretty crappy with regard to TDS & gets dumped. Takes mine that long to get down to 1 TDS after RO. Now continue to produce at least 5 gallons of RO before beginning DI production. This ensures RO TDS is about as low as it will get before you start sending water to the DI stage. Also allows the sediment filter(s) to get properly flushed. I've found TDS after sediment filters is significantly higher than source water TDS for about 5 minutes of running time. I think this is due to crap trapped by the sediment filters partially dissolving back into the standing water in the canister while the unit sits idle. I'm thinking the longer the system sits without running, the worse this issue can be. Once you start the system back up, all this nicely redissolved crap is sent to your carbon block & RO membrane, making both work harder. Furthermore, if you have the DI plumbed in during this start up phase, guess what?

-There's no way I would consider having my RODI controlled automatically to fill my sump or ATO for top off. This causes the system to run for short bursts (see info above), which is fine if your source water TDS is extremely low &/or you have lots of money & time to replace RO membranes & DI media.

Thanks for all that info! It was an interesting read!

Overflowing.
 

In case anyone was curious, this is what an overflow box looks like after almost 5 years of neglect.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...pseeqjwbtw.jpg

And this is what it looks like after 4" of feather dusters, 3 inches of detritus and about 5 hours of my life that I will never get back..

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...pshmm7hj9l.jpg

I kicked up a poop storm (literally), so decided to do a 50% water change. Snapped some coral out of water shots.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...psjiyszdc8.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...ps0xono62p.jpg

That is all. Good night.

that is totally nasty man. couldn't even find your drain pipe at first LOL.

What is that brown spaghetti looking stuff

feather dusters.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm.....soba.

Man, when i'm setting up my duplex fuge.... I'm coming over to snag some feather dusters to seed my benthic zone. Thats NUTZ. I'm sure they'll re-populate quick.

Those feather dusters must of polished that water real good before entering the sump. Is that the secret to those amazing corals? Now the new trend, everyone on Canreef is going to start dumping worms in their overflow box.:biggrin:

Next up is purging my sump. It's almost as bad.

If that's the case then I've removed at least 25% of my filtering capacity, frak!

I have often wondered though, how well feather dusters filter out dissolved organics, if at all. And if they do, then surly they must secrete waste as well so they are also dumping in nutrients as well ? Who knows :noidea:

All I know is that looked incredibly ugly :) Are they better looking when they are in water? The only things in my overflow right now are coraline and diatom film...

They definitely got to a point where I became too afraid to venture into my overflow.. That was three years ago. 3 more years on that and my overflow was probably harbouring some interesting things under the various strata of detritus, debris, feather dusters, aiptasia..