So you say tap water is no good? Hmm..

Intl Falls, you're barely in the US let alone the State of Mn :lol: .

That's a whole different situation than greater Mn where agriculture rules (and pollutes the groundwater). You probably have high iron content but probably none of the other problems of normal tap water.

Are the lakes still so pure you can dip a cup in the lake when you're thirsty ?
 
Just because I can see Canada doesn't mean I'm in Canada. What should be a 2 minute drive is a 40 minute ordeal at Customs. Only when I'm trying to get back though. :confused: I don't drink out of the lake though, fish poo in there, eww!
 
...and Giardia, right? I used to live in MN, went to the Boundary Waters every summer for two weeks. It is around +16 degrees tonight in NC, and it is killing me. Reminds me why I am glad I moved out of MN. Beautiful state, but I'm not tough enough!
 
I live in Los Angeles and the TDS of Our Tap water is well over 456ppm.
After it has been through reverse osmosis DI, It is .04
If i dump straight tap into my SPS/LPS/Clam/and soft coral reef, I am sure everything would be dead over night, maybe a couple days.
I am sure some people have better tap water then me.
But for some of us, We need to filter our Water.

Thanks for sharing though...
 
LisaD,
If you want to use it for drinking water you will want the pressure tank. Even a 75 GPD RO system only produces slightly more than a drip, drip, drip. Its maybe a small weak stream, actually about 6 oz. in a full minute best case so the tank is needed to get water on demand. I would replace the GE with an RO/DI. The GE is strictly a taset and odor filter. It does not remove TDS.
 
Thank you AZDesertRat for the useful information. I'll have to see what I can do. I may just keep the GE system for drinking water, and hook up an RO/DI without a tank for the aquariums to another sink.
 
The RO and pressure tank can be hooked up remotely. I have my RO/DI out in my garage over my laundry sink and the 14 gallon pressure tank on a shelf above my electric water heater also in the garage. It is plumbed to a drinking water faucet at the kitchen sink, in door ice maker and drinking water in the refrigerator, drinking water faucet ate the laundry sink and DI water faucet at the laundry sink.
I didn't have room under the kitchen sink either so it was just a matter of drilling a 3/8 hole through the wall to pass the 1/4" line through from the garage to the kitchen.
 
Ya'll have made me think... I need a TDS meter to see what's going in.
So, I just ordered one on Ebay.
I'll let you know what the SC tap is.
 
when i first started reefing in the early 90's, i used tap water to mix my salt up...i lived in a city with pure mountain spring run off for tap water. excellent water quality...

i knew only of chlorine and chloramines...nothing about tds...

my 10g nano (they didnt even have the term nano reef yet and live rock was $11 per pound where i lived) did great for the two years i had it running before tearing it down and starting school...did i run into problems? yes, the chloramines were a constant worry. the water company adjusts it according to their daily (sometimes weekly testing)...i called them constantly to inquire what their levels were.

as i ran into algae issues, i introduced racemosa caulerpa into my little display (of course, this is before the concept or terminology of refugium came in common practice), to soak up nitrates etc. was that a bad thing? now it is...but it did wonders before i could find any 'hard' literature on it...

so...back to tap water use...

you can use it...but like the knight from the last crusade said 'choose but choose wisely'...or something like that...i use ro/di to have one less thing to worry about as i have more than enough of that already in life...
 
Tap water user since the beginning, algea problems? Yes. I just have to figure out wether it was from months of maintanece neglect or the tap water itself. In the last month or 2 have changed light bulbs and filter media with multiple water changes from brand new saltmix and algea is on the run. I'm in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To my suprise even my LFS here uses tap in all displays.

Our water source: The North Saskatchewan River.

"The Saskatchewan Glacier in the Columbia Icefields is the source of the North Saskatchewan River (NSR). EPCOR draws its water from this river to supply drinking water to Edmonton and 40 surrounding communities. The Columbia Icefields is the only glacier in the world that drains into three oceans: to the east, the North Saskatchewan River drains into the Atlantic Ocean; to the north, the Athabasca River drains into the Arctic Ocean; and the Columbia River flows westward into the Pacific Ocean."

My first Coral addition was last weekend, a Toadstool Leather that opened up the very next moring. Don't get me wrong, if I had an RO/DI unit, I would use it.. But no severe problems in the past years.
 
After all the discussion on here, I decided to get a RO/DI unit from airwaterice out of Fort Pierce, Fl. After I ordered it, I was reading about how water hardness could be a problem. So I called AWI and spoke with Don. He told me to check the Los Angeles Annual Water Report to find out about GPG, a measure of hardness in the water. Instead the Hardness was measured in terms of mg/L. For the various sources for LA residential water, the numbers were from 88 mg/L to 215 mg/L. I emailed this info. to Don and he told me that it is too hard. He said that the water will have to be softened before I can use the unit properly. I asked him how to do that. He said since I live in a rental it would be up to the apartment complex (which I know better than to even bother asking for) to install a softener. He just told me to mail it back once I get it. Any suggestions for a way to use the unit??? I don't want to spend very much more money than I already have on this. Any renters in hardwater cities that use RO/DI?
 
RO/DI works perfectly well, maybe even better, without softening of hard water. What does happen is that the RO membrane gets deposits on it that render it less than effective over time.

FWIW, Spectrapure says the max hardness that they recommend is 170 ppm, so yours may be fine.

http://www.spectrapure.com/SYSTEM_BREAKDOWN.htm

I do not know of a good way around that problem, aside from softening the water or using the membrane until it's output is too low.

Perhaps others have better suggestions... :)
 
Thank you for your quick response. The guy at airwaterice told me that the membrane would clog in 2 or 3 months without a softener.
 
I used a RO for 14 years before adding a water softener about 18 months ago. My tap water TDS is over 800 and the hardness is in the neighborhood of 20+ grains or about 350 mg/L (ppm) (mg/L or ppm divided by 17.1 equals grains per gallon hardness). Membranes lasted 3+ years no problem. The secret is keep the waste ratio at the recommended 4:1 or slightly higher as high as 6:1. By keeping the membrane well flushed it lasts just fine. Its when people try to reduce the waste that they shorten the membranes life.
 
Thank you AZDR, I thought that hard water shouldn't have to mean I couldn't use RO/DI. If your water is 350 mg/L, then it is significantly harder than anything I should be encountering in L.A. city water. I will test the TDS when the unit gets here, as it has a TDS meter. Again thank you and Randy for your quick replies.

This RO/DI is all new to me. I've had very good luck with just plain old tap water, one of my current ritteri anemones is over over 5 years old just using dechlorinated/dechloriminated tap and mixing salt in, adjusting temp. and letting it circulate for ~24 hours. I'm "upgrading" based on the readings I've done on here and WWM that suggests that tap is somewhat unpredictable. So, that is why I'm going to give the RO/DI a try.
 
AZ, quick question.

I am retrofitting my older 25-50gpd RO/DI to a 75 filmtec membrane from BFS. I forgot to add a 75gpd flow regulator to the order.
I'm thinking I can still use this set-up until I get the proper restrictor.

Is this correct, or will I need to reduce the current restricter flow more to increase pressure on the membrane to get production?

Just need to make 20-30 gallons in the next week or so while waiting for the new restrictor to be delivered.
 
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