kien's 150g Room Divider Mixed Reef & Stuff

[kien]

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.



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

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



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.



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??