Wow, glad to hear it seems to have worked itself out between them for now! Best of luck to you! And the fish are beautiful!
One thing about your first post - You said:
"I have a feeling it is the water hardness. Extremely hard. I've been looking at RO, DI, and RO/DI units. I really like most DI units because they don't waste water and have rechargeable resins. Any preferences here? Particular brands? "
For a cheap, good-quality brand of unit, that is fairly basic, but does a great job, get an Aqua-Safe unit. This is what i use at home personally, and it performs very well. You can add additional cannisters if you need. All you really need is 2 or 3 pre-filters (to remove chlorine before it hits the R/O membrane, and potentially sediment filtration, these also expand the life of the R/O membrane by having less 'crud' go through it). The R/O membrane/sleeve itself is the next component. Finally, if you feel it is nessesary, you can add the D/I resin (though I dont personally use one... the amount of 'stuff' left in water after going through an R/O membrane is minimal, the last 1-20ppm of stuff is usually negligible).
Using a cannister of De-ionization resin alone would be almost useless. What D/I resin does is encourage a bond to any compound or element remaining in the water that is charged. H20(water itself) is electronically neutral, this means it will not be absorbed. Most compounds or elements dissolved in the water WILL attach to the D/I resin... this will cause a problem. Even with most processed city tap water in the world, your D/I resin will be saturated VERY quickly. For this reason, it is placed after the R/O membrane, and also because it will 'grab' substances regardless of their size/composition, unlike an R/O membrane, it is also placed after the membrane.
If you want to filter your water more effectively, buy a $100 booster pump that is installed before the unit. Use good/multiple pre-filters, and put a couple R/O membranes in 'parralelle', and you will get very little waste. This is how mine is set-up, and I get less than 2:1 (waste:good) ratio. I get about 1 unit of good water for every 1.5 ish units of waste water. Also, I can produce water VERY fast when compared to most units. I can make about 60g in 8 or 10 hours I think with the booster pump on? My water starts with a TDS reading of 1200ppm (well-water), and comes out at about 20-30ppm (depending on how new my sediment filters are, it actually goes down as they clog, but production also slows).
The unit, when compared to buying 5g jugs of R/O water, or the amount of D/I resin you would go through even with GREAT tap-water, would pay for itself VERY quickly.
Hope this helps your filtration considerations!
Cheers,
Chris
I know everything is going against me(introduced as adults, much larger male than female, hard, alkaline water, and only a 125 gallon for them), but things seem to be progressing positively, although slowly. On a side note, the only known spawning of 'Xingu I' was in a 125 gallon (likely the smallest size possible).
