RO Water

[term_paint]

I would for a medical company that has an RO water system. We also have ultra pure water. Can someone tell me how to tell if i can use the RO water for my tank.

Also i read that some use a mix of RO water and Deionized... I am confused or should i just get distilled water from the store. I am trying to cut the cost and my company will not care if i use some RO water..

I am not sure if RO water systems have drifferent types. Really confused.

 

[cdbias2]

That medical RO should be just fine. Do they have a TDS meter installed inline? That is the tell all.

 

[term_paint]

TDS

TDS

What is a tds meter and i can find out.?

 

[dileggi]

A TDS meter will measure the Total Dissolved Solids in the water. It will tell how much has been filtered out of the RO water.

If it helps, I purchased my own unit. Instead of going with RO/DI, my unit is just the DI...deionized part.

Depending on how the distilled water you could buy is distilled, you may be OK with that. I was using it for a bit before I purchased my water. Just read the label of the distilled water. A lot of them state distilled by reverse osmosis.

 

[AZDesertRat]

RO by itself will remove about 90-98% of the contaminants. RO/DI is better because the DI gets what the RO misses. Thats probably what their ultrapure system is if its a Barnstead or similar unit.

TDS is total dissolved solids or basically a measurement of the electrical conductivity of contaminants present in the water. It is expressed in parts per million or PPM TDS. Nationwide the average TDS of tap water is about 250, a good RO should reduce that to somewhere less than 10, probably closer to 5. Add a Deionization Filter (DI) after that and the TDS reaches 0 until the DI resin is exhausted where you replace it.

A pretty good hand held TDS meter can be bought for less than $25 from several of the RC sponsors or online. Its a good tool to have if you own your own RO/DI system or even if you purchase water.

 

[term_paint]

Barnstead

Barnstead

This is one of these units that is fed from the RO system. Does that make sense.

 

[cdbias2]

No it doesnt make sense. But if you are talking about a tds meter, they look like a fat (1") pencil that you dip the end into the water and it gives you a digital readout. You can buy one for around $20. This is a must have item for a reef tank.

 

[AZDesertRat]

Yes. Most nanopure systems or ultrapure systems consist of a water softener followed by either multiple DI cartridges or a pumped RO system followed by DI cartridges.

 

[cdbias2]

I don't know.
When you added water softener to your thread; that to me means salt additives because that's how most work around here. However, again the TDS meter would show this. If it was ultra pure it would read less than 10 ppm but a water softener is a different animal.

 

[AZDesertRat]

The water softener is pretreatment so the nanopure works better. All lab units around here have softeners at the front end. Sodium is easier for RO units to remove than calcium.

 

[cdbias2]

It still has to remove the calcium doesn't it.

 

[AZDesertRat]

No, the softener is an ion exchange unit. It exchanges sodium for calcium and magnesium so it has been removed before it gets to the RO unit.