RO Water vs Tap Water (Edmonton)

[Beverly]

At Safeway, they have the smaller (about 3.5g to 4g), disposable containers for about $5.00. At Zellers Northgate, reusable 5g is about $5.00 with a $10.00 deposit for the first container. It will take me months to use the 5g I have for top ups, but if I used store water for my entire tank and weekly 25% water changes, I'd definitely buy an RO/DI unit. Using tapwater gives me lots of leeway to do larger water changes than I would normally do with RO/DI, though.

Really, there is no reason you can't start with tapwater, then upgrade to an RO/Di system at some later date. A few large water changes on your tank would pretty much reduce the tapwater ratio close to 0% quite quickly.

BTW, Edmonton's water is treated with chloramine which is a compound made of chlorine and ammonia, and it's more stable for water treatment than chlorine.