Interesting to see a few more ray people using RO I've known a few and now a few more.
Also a lot of interest in TDS witch people never talked about.
what are people using to determine how much they drip per day? I've seen those plant auto water things sorry don't know what they are called or a math formula if so what is it.
Woefulrelic my thought on tds with regard to a softner is .......a softner will reduce tds' in water, at least lower than hard water, but not as low as ro or distilled water and put the amount somewhere in middle....hopefully just right?
I'm not sure what my thoughts are presently. I didn't think a water softener would reduce tds, and instead slightly raise it due to salt diffusion. The water softener itself is the part in the least versed on so I'm most likely incorrect. That's why this thread is very helpful, I'm just not well versed enough in water chemistry or the functionality of a water heater. I think I sort of flubbed by not becoming more familiar with water softeners because it's a logical starting point. Having you been keeping mature rays? It would ease my mind a bit of you had them breeding happily. My tap comes out around 100 ppm tds, I'll have to see about a bypass or switching the softener off for a time.
Interesting to see a few more ray people using RO I've known a few and now a few more.
Also a lot of interest in TDS witch people never talked about.
what are people using to determine how much they drip per day? I've seen those plant auto water things sorry don't know what they are called or a math formula if so what is it.
Interesting to see a few more ray people using RO I've known a few and now a few more.
Also a lot of interest in TDS witch people never talked about.
what are people using to determine how much they drip per day? I've seen those plant auto water things sorry don't know what they are called or a math formula if so what is it.
I didn't fully answer your question. I use the link from earlier to find the weekly % I want. I aim to remove water changes on my 300, in the field I use 350 because of my sump. Then it's a matter of finding an amount dropped per day that ends up with a weekly water change of 60% or greater. I devised I'd drop about 60 gallons a day, or 2.5 gallon per hour. I intend to use a compensated dripper connected to my cold water line to drip 2.5 gallons an hour. Compensated drippers come different or adjustable sizes, so you can fine tune or add more later. You need to know what your water pressure is for these to work, and since I haven't set my drip up yet (in lieu of water softener research) so that's as far as I've gotten.
Woefulrelic keep in mind the salt is a cleaning agent that gets flushed out, the salt should not be left in the water, hence the reason the tds' should not be raised, but lowered as soft water should have less disolved solids - minerals.
Your hard water should flow over the resin in chamber, which pulls out most of the minerals, then once full, u r softner uses the salt to clean the minerals out of u r resin. then the process starts all over again. When ur softner is not flushing, it should simply have hard water flowing over resin that is then sent to your faucets with less minerals.......not touching any salt. If salt is leaking or mixing into water that gets to your faucet, then your softer has a problem.
This is what I was told by a plumber and appears to be confirmed when researched as I didn't want to be drinking salt water lol......and i can say with confidence, my water clearly does not taste salty.
This blog is interesting because I've learned i am probably not dripping enough, and I could tweek a few things as well.
A softener should lower tds. Think about it.... the salt used in the process is pulling heavy metals out of the water, thus lowering total dissolved solids. I know my tds straight out of the tap is around 300 something. After my RO/DI it's about 1 or 2 tds. I can't get it at zero, ever. Or at least my inline meter never reads zero. Once my tds starts to climb up arpund 5 or 6 I know I need to change filters. Especially the DI resin.
Thanks both of you for taking the time to explain it. After mulling on what you guys had to say I'm considering setting the drip up as is. I'm guessing that if my biggest complaint about my water is that the kh is low and the tds is around 100 I probably don't have the worst water here. Would you guys care to weigh in?
05spurky Do you run any pothos or plants in the tank? They would probably eat any nitrates you build up, without them theoretically your nitrates should build up extremely slowly. My rays are about a year or under and they are doing well.
