RO/DI water vs DI water in the lower mainland

[BCOrchidGuy]

Okay so our water is very soft, extremely soft. I've used the DI filters before and had excellent results with them but I'm curious as to what you see as being the bennifit to RO/DI rather than just the DI.
I can recharge the DI unit, the unit with a spare cartridge is $50 (give or take). So convince me RO/DI is better....

Doug

[4ptbuck]

The guy at Big Al's told me this as well. Convinced me to go DI only.
I wish I had a TDS meter.

My eyeball meter says my hair algae is gone.
I don't have any issues with my tank water.
Corals look happy.
And my DI resin is about 1/4 expired.
I bought the unit in Oct last year and would guess I've made over 200g of water so far.

[BCOrchidGuy]

Well a good RO unit uses DI to remove the stuff the RO doesn't. Your DI cartridge will change colour as it's exausted and you can either purchase a new one or regenerate the old.

Doug

[Rikko]

My tapwater TDS in North Vancouver is 9-10ppm. At the Pet Gallery it was around 13 both times I tested it. I'm just using DI and have probably burned through 1/8-1/4 of the cartridge and drawn a good 50 gallons of water from it. A new DI cartridge every year isn't going to break my back - I'm happy with that.

BTW, I'm assuming everybody is using the Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Tap Water Filter/Purifier? What chemical do you use to regenerate it and what's the process?

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by BCOrchidGuy

Okay so our water is very soft, extremely soft. I've used the DI filters before and had excellent results with them but I'm curious as to what you see as being the bennifit to RO/DI rather than just the DI.
I can recharge the DI unit, the unit with a spare cartridge is $50 (give or take). So convince me RO/DI is better....

Doug

3 years on my membrains and filter changes of 5.00 ever 3 months. so that is on a 320gpd set up so I can pound out about 5 gal of RO in about 22 min. in an emergency in 4 hours I can do 60 gal of ro water.

I worked it out a couple weeks ago for a friend looking at getting an RO for drinking water instead of buying water and it cost me less than $.05 to make 5 gal of water. so lets say you buy a TWP at 50 bucks cuz you don't want to play with asid. they tipicly make 400 gal I believe around here. that works out to $0.625 for 5 gal so even if you get 1000 gal out of yours that is going to be $0.25 for 5 gal now if you recharge how much does tha asid and your time cost?

Another big factor is speed, you run water to fast through a TWP and it doesn't do its job properly.

at any rate I use my RO for drinking water and for the tank so cost/gal is cheeper over the long run even after the inital cost.

Steve

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by BCOrchidGuy

Well a good RO unit uses DI to remove the stuff the RO doesn't. Your DI cartridge will change colour as it's exausted and you can either purchase a new one or regenerate the old.

Doug

I just found out color changing DI is no longer availble, so any you buy is from places that horded stock.

Steve

[Willow]

my tds in richmond is 8-10.

[BCOrchidGuy]

Leave it to Steve to convince me I should give this more thought than I thought I should... can I send you the bill? lol.

Colour changing resins aren't available now.. great mind you I figure if I recharged beginning of each season I'd be fine. Have the resins changed? If so I wonder if they are still rechargable. Found a place that will lease RO/DI units for $33 a month.... hmm.. another bill oh heck why not eh I can skip a meal or two (again).

Doug

[BCWolfen]

Originally Posted by BCOrchidGuy

Found a place that will lease RO/DI units for $33 a month.... hmm.. another bill oh heck why not eh I can skip a meal or two (again).
Doug

3 months =$99.00......

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?...sPageName=WD2V

price: US $90.00 (Approximately C $108.58)

[StirCrazy]

Doug, you can start out with a 25 gal system then in a year or so upgrade it to a 160gpd membrain, everything else is the same as long as you buy a standard type and not a calgon setup.

Steve