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Re: RO/DI System vs. TapWater Purifier

Neil Anderson wrote:

snipalot...
> My ideal aquarium water maintenance system would be one that would process
> enough water within 2-4 hours to replace the 30 gallons or so that I am
> withdrawing.  This is what the TapWater Purifier can do.  Is there a more
> permanent system (RO, RO/DI, or other) that can do the same? 
> 

My system requires more space, but does exactly what you are asking for. I
run a 10G/day RO system into a 40G plastic storge barrel, via a
"swamp-cooler" valve. A waterfall, submersible pump in the barrel sends the
water to whatever tank needs it through a vinyl hose. I have a
dual-carbon-filtered tap-water tank alongside it, and just move the pump to
the tank I want to draw from. The whole thing takes up a small fraction of a
back closet.

In addition to a sprinkler-head with bent-arm delivery system, I have a
valve at the outlet end for turning water off between tanks. An X-10 switch
on the pump lets me remotely turn it off, so it doesn't overheat my storage
water.

I'm almost never out of RO, despite the fact that I have up to 150 small
tanks going sometimes. I have over 100 running most of the time, about 300G
in larger tanks. 50G/day is overkill, IMHO, but storage is important for
nearly any RO system. More water to change? More storage. The 3G tank that
comes with most of them is a joke.

My fish and plants need trace minerals, so I rarely use pure RO. I do use it
for evaporation replacement. Actually most of my tanks are straight tap (270
ppm tds) water, just dual-carbon filtered at a slow trickle to remove all
chloramine. The storage tank lets me do that.

RO/DI is even more gross overkill, IMO, as one cannot even raise either fish
or plants in that water without reconstituting it somehow (adding back tap
water). I have very few fish that can live in my 10-20 ppm tds RO water,
now, and none that would do well at zero.

That's how I do it, anyway.

Wright

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