Do you Use RODI water?

[Travillion]

Originally Posted by crimper

I used to raised/bred Discus, the most sensitive fresh water fish that you could ever keep. Most discus keepers use RO/DI as discus is very sensitive to Chlorine and Chloramine, however based on my experience water here at the Lower Mainland is almost pure and Chlorine is the only thing that you need to watch out during Winter/Spring months.

A pinch of Prime during Winter/Spring time is all I use.

This is true, our tap water is brilliant. Especially Richmond's (less time traveling through pipes). Tested at only 12TDS, and didn't even register for chlorines.

However, I switched to RO/DI water a couple of months ago. I switched without knowing what our tap water was really like, I just assumed my tanks could benefit from higher quality water. I would actually still stick with my decision though. I ran a waste bucket for the first few weeks as a comparison, and let me tell you, that water STUNK, while the reservoir water had no scent and registered 0TDS. Even though we have very clean water, there are still clearly some nitrates floating around in there that could have an impact. I would also like to include that since making the switch, an algae problem has drastically decreased.

All that having been said, I have been keeping freshwater for nearly 10 years without RO/DI (obviously not as substantial of an ordeal), and never even questioned my water quality.

[SanguinesDream]

As we had a huge Pembina oil spill about 10 yrs ago upstream of our water intake, I have almost always used a tap RO unit.

However, as I move from a softie dominant tank to a sps dominant tank, I am upgrading to a 5 stage RODI unit.

[hfp75]

I live in the SW and my TDS here at home is 150-200'ish. Ive always used tap water - no issues that I know of. I recently was given a RODI system and will be installing it when time permits.

I'll run with it for a few months and see how my main tank responds...

I am guessing that there will be nothing noticeable. However, if there was ever a problem with the water you'd never notice if your running RODI.

Its that 1-2% chance.

[Ginu]

I maintain two tanks one in West Vancouver and one in North Vancouver and use RO/Di for both tanks.
The water quality is amazing in my opinion, North Van TDS out of the tap is 8-9 and west van 7-8.. only issue is the PSI on both lines which is 43PSI; from all my research I found out that most older buildings are required to run a top of 40-45 PSI due to old lines which can easily burst if higher pressure runs through them along with drastic temperature changes.

I am assuming that's low enough to use for a reef tank, however I will not take any chances which can potentially take months to remedy if not longer and in some cases it can never be reversed if there is ever a loss of livestock.

Every tank I've seen using tap water has some sort of algae issue and the owners have never been able to keep it down... for example Aquariums West in DT uses tap water and the guy there doesn't quite understand why his main display RSM S500 has algae... I like the shop and I bought a RSM S500 there but the guy should really know not to top off the water with direct tap water treated for chlorine and use tap water for water changes...

Now while we test for TDS and get a reading, how does one know what exactly is in the water at any given time?? parameters change all the time and I'm sure the water quality changes on regular basis as well and the ones using tap water have absolutely no idea what is in the water today vs last week vs next week and so on...

A decent RO unit runs about 300$ mark which is well worth it considering how much we invest in our tanks. Also why spend hundreds of dollars on testing kits and refills etc if the water used is from the tap??


In my opinion, the savings from using tap water vs RO/Di water are just not worth the risk.

[gobytron]

Pretty easy to see what's in your water...

http://www.calgary.ca/UEP/Water/Page...arameters.aspx

[Aquattro]

I think that's a good sample of what is supposed to be in your water. If something else enters the water mains post testing site, it's invalid. Having RO protects against that. Also, the city doesn't test everything that might impact a reef.

[Ginu]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

I think that's a good sample of what is supposed to be in your water. If something else enters the water mains post testing site, it's invalid. Having RO protects against that. Also, the city doesn't test everything that might impact a reef.

Also how often do they test the water? i doubt its daily and I doubt any reefer would log on to see whats in the water on any given day...