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Re: wet/drys and RO

> Subject: A couple questions
> 
> Hello everyone,
> Still planning out my 120 gallon system, these questions arose in my mind:
> 1. If you are using a wet-dry filter on a CO2 injected tank, and you left
> the wet-dry open to the room air, you would lose most of your CO2.  But then
> if you sealed the wet-dry to keep CO2 in the water, wouldn't this defeat the
> purpose of using wet-dry?  After a short time, with carbon-dioxide injected
> water trickling through the sealed filter, the chamber would fill up with
> CO2.  The water would be coming in contact with CO2, not oxygen.
> 2.  This one is just curiosity....  Wouldn't water coming out of an RO unit
> be a pH of 7?  I thought these produced pure water, without anything else in
> it.  So why then, is the pH of RO water low? (in the 4-6 range)
> Please clear me up on these if I'm wrong.  Thanks for the help.
> Brad Larsen

First check the archives. This has been beaten to death. Wet/drys are fine
and great IMO. RO is not needed for a planted tank. CO2 is what the plant is
after, not soft pure water. Your RO might may have a slight acid in the
bucket or if it sits out the CO2 can get in there perhaps like when pure
water falls as rain picking up the CO2 in the air and making it acid. You
need not worry about what your pH of RO is really. It has no buffering at
all so even a tiny amount of acid will make the water seem very acidic. Do
not worry about pH till you have added some KH in there(3KH or more). Then
use CO2 only to adjust it from there.

I've used both canisters and wet/drys for many years and on a number of
different tanks. I like wet/drys better. Steve, George and a number of
others have gone through this before with folks about wet/drys. They are
quite fine for planted tanks. I have not found the CO2 use anymore than the
canister tanks. 
Regards, 
Tom Barr