RODI waste water and hydroponics
- Thread starter jong11
- Start date
Thisseemsfishy
Just another Reefer
No problems. In the summer, I use mine in the garden as well. Unfortunately during the winter it goes sown the drain, though watering the plants w it is a great idea.
Buckeye Hydro
.Registered Member
If you are using any sort of misting system and your waste water is hard, you may have issues with scale build up.
Russ
Russ
Utah Fatman
New member
It shouldn't be a problem in a hydroponic system. The extra minerals will benefit the plants.
Buckeye Hydro
.Registered Member
No - remember all the water exiting the system, meaning both your waste water and your purified water, has gone through your prefilters (typcially a sediment filter and a carbon block. The carbon removes chlorine).
Russ
Russ
elegance coral
They call me EC
My waste water flows into my fish pond. The pond simply overflows, so every time I need water for my tanks, the pong gets a water change as well.
Great idea. My pond has its own ATO however.
elegance coral
They call me EC
Thanks. It works well for me. I go through quite a bit of RO/DI water. Every time I mix up 100 gallons of salt water, my pond gets about 300 gallons of clean water. I have no pumps or filtration on my pond, but the water is always crystal clear. All I have to do is remove the leaves off the bottom of the pond every once in a while.
That is a great idea. I never considered using the RODI waste water in my pond or freshwater fish tank. I need to check the pressure required to see if I can plumb the RO waste line directly to my drip irrigation system.
Buckeye Hydro
.Registered Member
The pressure in your waste water will be very similar to your feedwater pressure. However, if you contrain the waste water output realize that you are further restricting flow, and you'll change your waste water to purified water ratio.
Russ
Russ
Good point, I did not consider that. I will skip the drip irrigation system and use the waste water to refill the pond. Thanks for the information Russ.
Reeferwill561
New member
If your mixing up hydroponic nutrients than make sure you get the softwater version of the nutrient.
Depending on what your growing, you will get better results with the clean water than the waste water. If you are just growing ornamentals and herbs than it doesn't matter really, if you are growing strawberries or edibles than ro water is better from my experience.
-Will P.
Depending on what your growing, you will get better results with the clean water than the waste water. If you are just growing ornamentals and herbs than it doesn't matter really, if you are growing strawberries or edibles than ro water is better from my experience.
-Will P.
As a former dealer for hydrofarms- we used to mix all of our hydroponic solutions with RO. It is no different than aquarium chemistry as far as ph and such goes- and using the best quality water leads to the best quality of nutrient solution. I would suggest going to a hydroponics board to ask this question. Their answer would be the same as if you asked here, if you could use the waste from your hydroponic RO for your reef tank.
sslak
New member
I wouldn't recommend using the waste ro water for hydroponics. I have done a lot of hydroponic gardening and use the good RO water to mix up the hydroponic solution. You definitely don't want to use the waste water. If you use the waste water you will get big PH swings and depending on what's in your input water you could get algae in your hydroponic tank.
Sorry for the bad news! Hydroponic gardening is great and a lot of fun but can be a real pain if you don't stay on top of good water chemistry. I guess you could say the same about reefing!
Sorry for the bad news! Hydroponic gardening is great and a lot of fun but can be a real pain if you don't stay on top of good water chemistry. I guess you could say the same about reefing!
jeff@zina.com
New member
I'm in the process of running my RO/DI waste to the rain barrel. Unfortunately, I rarely use the rain barrel right now. 
Jeff
Jeff
