# RO or something else



## kwc1974 (Jan 4, 2006)

What exactly is RO, in other words what does it do to achieve "perfect water"?

Is there another filtration method that can come close, an inline method form tap to tank?

To give you an idea of what I am trying to achieve, my tap water has a kh value of 23...liquid rock...shrimp loved it.
I don't want perfect water, I just want to lower my kh to somewhere around 10-15

I am currently using seachem acid buffer to lower my kh and it works, just the first time I did a water change since I have been lowering my kh I had a huge ph swing and all my fish died.


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## mrbelvedere138 (Jan 18, 2006)

Reverse osmosis forces water through a membrane and only the pure water actually goes through, the rest is rejection water. Aside from collecting rainwater, which I doubt is feasible in Houston, there aren't a lot of options. You can buy distilled water, though that is expensive. You can make your own distillery (think moonshining on a legal basis), but that is involved and needs quite a bit of space. Or, you can just buy a nice R/O unit off ebay (100GPD for generic model) for about $100. I have a nice little Coralife one, that I mix about 1:2 ratio in all my water for the sake of balance, but 95% of all the plants out there don't care at all about the hardness/kH. Oh, and get rid of the acid buffer. They cause way to many problems.


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## kwc1974 (Jan 4, 2006)

> mrbelvedere138 wrote:
> Oh, and get rid of the acid buffer. They cause way to many problems.


I found that out the hard way.



> mrbelvedere138 wrote:
> but 95% of all the plants out there don't care at all about the hardness/kH


some of my plants were thriving very well, but some were stunted back.

My biggest concern is that I could not get and adequate level of CO2 no matter how much I was injecting. I went thru my 5# bottle in a month and a half.

I will check out ebay for an RO
but what I was really hoping for is was a filter that would just get me half way there and run inline with my water changes so that I would not have to worry about water storage.


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## jrvs23 (Apr 14, 2006)

If you don't want to buy a RO filter most water supplier stores carry RO. It is resonabley cheap and you won't waste all that water on your home bill. Another option from the store is to get a RO drinking water package. That way you can drink some and you what you need for your tank and get a cooler stand also.


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## hoppycalif (Apr 7, 2005)

kwc1974 said:


> I found that out the hard way.
> 
> some of my plants were thriving very well, but some were stunted back.
> 
> ...


I wish one of our chemists here would explain how high KH can make it difficult to dissolve CO2 into water. My intuition says it doesn't.


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## kwc1974 (Jan 4, 2006)

I guess nobody has any other suggestion other than go RO


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## milalic (Aug 26, 2005)

I think is the easiest most reliable method and the one that will cause less headaches to you.


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## kwc1974 (Jan 4, 2006)

I wholeheartedly agree that it is the most reliable and easiest...the problem is it is also expensive and cumbersome. The cheapest I have found is on ebay
and then you have to deal with water storage. The 5 or 10 gallon storage tanks that come with the RO unit is great for topping of the tank, but when it comes to mass storage a 55 gallon is at least required (more $), then you would need a pump from the storage tank to aquarium (more $), then you need to bring the cure the water with RO right or some other chem (more $).

If I am completely off base here somebody please correct me.

I feel that there has to be some other way to deal with hard water without resorting to RO or adding chemicals in after you refill the aquarium (ph shifts)

There I have had my RO rant for today.

I guess what I was really hoping for is come kind of cartrige filter that would run inline to my water changes directly into the aquarium.


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## Wö£fëñxXx1 (Feb 10, 2005)

RO is really the only way to make hard water soft.
What size tank are you talking about?
55g Tupperware trash can's are cheap also, if you have a large tank.
A 100GPD unit is not to expensive and they are very nice to have, the water taste good too..
http://cgi.ebay.com/AQUA-SAFE-AQUAR...ryZ20684QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting


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## turnstile (Oct 23, 2005)

I'm not a chemist, but as far as I know boiling the water removes some of the KH in the process, especially if it's in a metal conatainer where it can collect.

I use RO and it has its pros and cons, but it does work. 

As for Seachem's Acid Buffer, unlike other buffers it works by converting KH to CO2 which means your pH is going to fall not only because the pH is going down, but because there's going to be more CO2 in the water. To use it safely you should either add it very slowly or prepare the water in a different container and let it sit while running an air stone for a day or two until the pH stabilises.

Or, you can add peat moss to your filter, which works really slowly and might not even be noticeable if you perform large water changes.

As for CO2 not being able to dissolve, that's why we call KH "buffer". The higher the KH the more CO2 you need to inject to get your CO2 level to where you want it and more wastte, so it does make sense to lower the KH in your case. 

Hope this helps in any way.


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## Raul-7 (Feb 4, 2004)

You may want consider a DI unit instead; it gives you 0ppm TDS (RO gives you 10ppm - not a big deal). *Not mention no waste water at all!* The only problem is that it won't produce as much an RO unit, but it can always be recharged fairly easily with NaOH and HCl - that's if you're willing to do so. 

I ended up getting the Kent Deion 200-R for that reason; all I have to do is change the carbon prefilter every six months and recharge the resins every time they are exhausted - you can tell by the color change. Much better than RO because that water goes in and directly comes out the other side, no need to wait for hours before getting 5 gallons of pure water. It's rated in gp/minute as opposed to gp/day.


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## mrbelvedere138 (Jan 18, 2006)

How exactly does Acid Buffer change carbonate hardness to CO2?


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## kwc1974 (Jan 4, 2006)

If you do a search on Acid Buffer on this site there is a really good explanation for it from Seachem

Raul-7 I like the Deion setup, that sound pretty much like what I had in mind. Except for the cost, its the same as RO, but I guess I can not have it all. At least with DI I will not have to mess with water storage and I am really interested in the recharging of the filter elements. Kent had a real strong warning about it, is it that hard or are thay worried about liability form the chemicals used?


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