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Re: Reconstituting RO water

In response to a comment I made about Kent Marine RO Right (I have been told
that it is a variation on Aquarium Systems Instant Ocean salt mix), Roger
Miller wrote:

> Gaak!  If that's right, then RO Right would give you water with
> the composition of dilute sea water, which isn't much at all like normal
> fresh water.  There's a big variation in the composition of fresh
> water, but compared to "normal" fresh water, dilute sea water would
> have a high sodium content relative to calcium, magnesium and
> potassium and chloride would be high relative to bicarbonate and
> sulfate.

I don't know how excited we should get about this Roger. Personally, I was
quite frustrated with the folks at Kent Marine for refusing to give me any
help on figuring out even the ratio of the major cations and anions that
would be in the reconstituted water but I have a feeling that RO Right is a
VARIATION of Instant Ocean, NOT merely a repackaged product. I know its
generally not wise to do so, but I have done the "taste test" on Instant
Ocean salt mix, RO Right and Equilibrium. The human tongue is very sensitive
to "salt", and we can detect it in relatively small amounts. Equilibrium
produced no sensation of "salt" on my tongue, indicating that there is no
NaCl in the mixture - a fact borne out by the guaranteed analysis on the
label. R/O Right produced a very definate "salt" tang when a very small
amount was tasted, but nowhere near as intense a bite as Instant Ocean gave,
leading me to believe that the NaCl content of RO Right is lower than
Instant Ocean.

I would venture a guess (and this is only conjecture) that if my information
source was correct, and Kent gets the raw material for RO Right from
Aquarium Systems, then they reduce the amount of sodium chloride used in RO
Right as opposed to Instant Ocean. If Aquarium Systems mixes their own
product from pure salts, then I'm sure that this would be feasible to do
during the manufacturing (mixing) process. Also, the amount of R/O added to
pure R/O water is miniscule (1 teaspoon per 10 gallons for medium soft
water). I've never noticed a problem with the Na or Cl at those doseage
levels. Chlorine is an essential micronutrient and Sodium generally only
causes problems when present in very large amounts (such as that produced by
a household water softener). Seachem recommends that much more Equilibrium
be used to achieve equivalent hardness levels (1 Tablespoon per 10 gallons
raises GH by 3 dH), but as the product contains no NaCl this works just fine
in my tanks (it also adds 80 mg/L of Potassium at this doesage level, which
is a nice side effect for a planted tank).

Maybe it's time to call on that mythical "somebody" who has access to an
analytical lab to run some tests <g>.

Regarding your "recipe" for water:

> We can do better than that.  Here's a recipe
>
> Chemical dose/ dose/ measurement
> 100 liters 50 gallons unit
>
> epson's salt 3.5 6.5 quarter teaspoons
> calcium carbonate 6 11 600 mg tablets
> baking soda 4 8 quarter teaspoons
> potassium chloride 1.5 3 quarter teaspoons

Is this using 1/4 tablespoon measures? (measuring spoons come in sets - 1/4,
1/2, 1 Teaspoon, and 1 Tablespoon)

James Purchase
in Toronto with the taste of salt still on my tongue... someone please pass
the popcorn...