RO water... now what?

[Tetra Guy]

Hey everyone, I’m thinking of setting up an RO unit for aquarium (and household) use. My pipes are 100 years old, pretty nasty and leech a bit of copper into the water. 🤢  Pipes to street are lead... ugh 🤢 I have a pretty good idea of how to set up the RO unit, but I’m unsure about re-mineralzing the pure filtered for aquarium use. Can anyone guide me on what is involved?  Thanks!! 🙂

[gardenman]

Remineralizing is pretty easy. You just buy a powder and add it to the RO water. Seachem Equilibrium is one such powder. You use one tablespoon for every twenty gallons if you're using Seachem. 

Depending on your water pressure you may need to add a booster pump to the RO unit to make sure it has enough water pressure. I'm on a well with a 20/40 pressure switch on the pump. That means my water pressure will drop to 20 psi before the pump comes on and then the pump runs until the pressure in the tank is up to 40 psi. Most RO units need at least 35 psi, so I would need to add a booster pump to use an RO system here. RO systems generate a lot of waste water also, so you'll need to plan what to do with it. As a general role you'll use four gallons of water to make one gallon of RO water. That can add up pretty quickly if you're paying a lot for water.

You can buy spring water and distilled water relatively affordably per gallon these days $.060-$0.80 at my local Walmart. Between the cost of the RO system, the waste water, and the cost of replacement cartridges, you might want to consider that. Collecting rainwater (where allowed) is another good alternative. It's generally fairly usable. It might be a bit acidic and soft, but some crushed coral or aragonite helps cure that. 

[ScottieB]

I use a lot of RO water in my house between my reef tank, the freshwater fish room and the family. I have three RO Systems total. I cannot imagine buying water by the gallon. 

The drinking water RO system plumbed to the kitchen sink is from SpectraPure and incorporates a remineralization chamber (calcite, or Calcium Carbonate) into the system.
 

For the fish systems I use purely RO water as too off. Honestly the freshwater fish get water changes from the tap and topped off with RO. The reef tank gets RO mixed with salt. 

Not sure if any of that helps just saying that you will not regret an RO purchase. Maybe just passing RO water through a calcium carbonate chamber or “reactor” would do the trick. But if I know there’s products like Kent Marine RO Right that are designed for that specific purpose. 

[KoolFish97]

Do exactly what Cory does. 

Crushed coral!!!  

(He has a dose he recommends on his website to buff it) 

His tap water is pretty much RO from the tap as he has stated in many videos that's what he does to make it good for fish

[David Ellsworth]

Many people use the Seachem product mentioned above with good results. I use a Shrimp King mineral product called Shrimp King GH/KH. They have both GH/KH, or just GH product with no KH. Some people use Salty Shrimp products as well. Lastly, there are salts marketed to African Cichlid keepers that I've seen but not used. 

The only product I've used is the Shrimp King stuff and that works well. Many of the good salts will give you a ratio. So much product with so much water give a certain ppm. To give you an idea of levels. Many neocaridina shrimp keepers that remineralize water shoot for around 180-200 ppm or around there. Whatever you decide I'd be consistent every time you mix it up to help avoid instability.   

My apartment has water included so I can filter all the water I want for just the price of RO replacement cartages so that helps.

Edited January 24, 2021 by David Ellsworth

[tolstoy21]

If you use Seachem Equilibrium, that only adds back GH, you’ll need something like Seachem Alkaline or Acid Buffer to adjust the KH.

I think these Seachem products are pretty decent, and probably more cost effective than the comparable Shrimp products.

Crushed Coral and Aragonite also works to adjust the KH, but these won’t budge the GH that much.

[Leo2o915]

On 1/23/2021 at 9:53 PM, ScottieB said:

I use a lot of RO water in my house between my reef tank, the freshwater fish room and the family. I have three RO Systems total. I cannot imagine buying water by the gallon. 

The drinking water RO system plumbed to the kitchen sink is from SpectraPure and incorporates a remineralization chamber (calcite, or Calcium Carbonate) into the system.
 

For the fish systems I use purely RO water as too off. Honestly the freshwater fish get water changes from the tap and topped off with RO. The reef tank gets RO mixed with salt. 

Not sure if any of that helps just saying that you will not regret an RO purchase. Maybe just passing RO water through a calcium carbonate chamber or “reactor” would do the trick. But if I know there’s products like Kent Marine RO Right that are designed for that specific purpose. 

So since you familiar with Kent RO right is it better then using equilibrium