Reverse osmosis for rays

[DB junkie]

I don't mess with RO. Like I suggested, better off contacting someone that uses it.

Just tryin to help...

Stan what does the end mix test out at? Is the RO just taking the TDS way down then a mix back with waste and tap bring it back up?

 

[rudy]

Just curious but you don't drip the waste water in the tank do you? I was completely blown away by the waste water. I thought my ro unit was broken!

Anyway ended up chickening out on the pure ro and dripping tap 50 and ro 50. Hopefully this works.

DI resin will further lower the TDS reading to almost 0. DI (deionzitaion) removes more mineral and trace element that remains after it pushes through the RO membrane.

RO membrane basically a very fine mechanical filtration and the DI removes the ions that bonds some of the chemical to where you'll have pure water.

I have a triple INLINE TDS meter, Tap is 160 ppm, after RO 20-30 PPM and after DI is 0-1 PPM

To answer the original post, if your tap is too hard (well water), you can do the RO mix with Tap.

I did this in my shop, I basically drip the RO, waste water and tap water all at the same time. My tap alone was 18 DKH, PH was A LOT higher than 10.0

stan

 

[flamenco-t]

I don't mess with RO. Like I suggested, better off contacting someone that uses it.

Just tryin to help...

Stan what does the end mix test out at? Is the RO just taking the TDS way down then a mix back with waste and tap bring it back up?

I had never checked the end result, but the fish were coming to more active in no time. I had a big black aro, dat, fei feng and bichirs.

I wanted a lower hardness, the fish were adjusting fine BUT it's too far from their natural comfort zone.

Think of human being in 120 degree weather ALL The time. We can survive it but doesn't necesarily IDEAL for us.

Just curious but you don't drip the waste water in the tank do you? I was completely blown away by the waste water. I thought my ro unit was broken!

Anyway ended up chickening out on the pure ro and dripping tap 50 and ro 50. Hopefully this works.

I did drip the waste water as well. Waste water is better than a standard tap, it's basically all the reject from the membrane. It's free of chlorine and chloramine.

When I used to have my feeder tank in the garage, I never changed the water, I just let the waste water to drip into the tank and the tank overflow to the side yard.

I have our drinking water running off RO so it is continously dripping waste water.

Waste amount is a good indication how exhaustive your membrane is. An effective membrane will need 3-4 gallons of tap to make 1 gallon of RO, when it started to dump MORE waste, your membrane need to be replace.

stan

 

[leather]

One thing with these ro units that you get at lowes and most aquarium stores is that the rejection rate is in the 80%-85% rejection rate range. If your tds is very high to begin with your ro water is going to be 15% of that. My tap water is 610ppm tds on average. With a 85% rejection rate that is still over 90ppm tds. That would still be a lot of mineral content for these applications. I recently got a ro unit I have been experimenting with. I am getting 98% rejection with this unit. This water is very unstable, there is no buffer at all. It actually pulls minerals from wherever it can get it. From what I have found out this water will remove the minerals from the fish.
I guess what I am saying is that until you test the water that you are creating you won't know what you have to add.

 

[michalm]

our ph is usually high 7s after the ro it will still be 7 or higher.plus the ro will be dripped directly how would any type of shock occur from this if their constant water dripping.i do plan on mixing myself but i really want to know if anybody has done pure ro fine with good results cause their is a few times of year that i would lke to run pure

I was using RO/DI system more than half a year. See this post: http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4608093&postcount=45 and all thread about my Automatic Water Exchange.

My DTS was: 29 before membrane and 0 after membrane. I rarely change water in my tank using tap water... usually/mostly I used water from RO/DI system. When I check water DTS in my tank was 120-200... conclusion ? Water in our tank when was cycled properly never become idle/pure, and in my opinion even you will exchange water using pure water for 10 years your filters will be fine.

I've read a lot about RO/DI system and finally I removed RO system (membrane) yesterday. I left only two GE units filters: one with 5 MICRON POLY SEDIMENT FILTER and second CARBON BLOCK FILTER. Why?

Well... I was using this system for my two tanks (arowana and stingrays). The pure water is not good for any fish. My KG and KH was always almost 0. When I put cucumber on tank for my Plecos after 2 days it was surrounded by a gray coating. The same I found on my new driftwood. I asked people what is this and why it happened. Nobody gives me right/good answer why and what is this, but I think that this is because of lack of minerals and other substances in water. I had not seen something like that before I started using RO/DI system.
Moreover, one of my Black Arowana's fins can't recover in 100% - I read that pure water has a negative impact on fish bones, that is explaining why one of my arowana has problem to recover. Yes/No, Maybe ? Well, we will see for couple weeks

My PH was always 6.2 (when I was using RO/DI system). My tap water is 7.0-7.3

I'm not sure if I make a good decision removing membrane. Even today what I read and what I observed I still have lots of questions... The fact is that using "pure water drip system" give you clean and stable water parameters... but today I'm not sure that this is most important. Even I have always NO3 between 5-10ppm, NO2, Ammonia - 0ppm and PH 6.2... there are lots of other parameters very important for our fish.

PS: Very good Thread !

 

[dookie]

yeah the threat of pH crash is too great. I wouldn't do it.

 

[michalm]

And one more thing... To make my tank water better and gives fish all what they needs I started using Kent RO/DI Right. Very hard to dispense the appropriate amount of powder (Kent RO/DI Right) and make sure that water is like it should be. How to check it ?... no way in easy way... and very unstable.

 

[Industrial]

I wouldn't use straight up RO because it has no stability at all. The fact that RO water is acidic instead of neutral like it ideally should be shows how easily it can swing or crash.

I premix all of my blackwater with 4 gallons of RO and 1 gallon of tap water. That one gallon of tap water adds some hardness to the RO water and gives it a stable pH. If you want a lower pH I would use blackwater extract and measure out how much it takes to get the pH to where you would like it and just use that from that point on.

So basically, start premixing RO water with some tap water. Measure hardness and get hardness where you would like it by adding more RO or tap water. Then add blackwater extract until you get the pH you want. This will be the best way to premix water for rays. I would double check, but I think rays are blackwater fish. If they are not, I wouldn't use blackwater extract. After you get everything the way you want it, then start to slowly add it to your system so you don't shock the fish.

If the rays are doing fine without RO water though, don't even mess with it since it is tedious to try to get everything correct.

 

[DB junkie]

This whole water chemistry thing is pretty frustrating if you think about it. Filter the water down to the point where you must add minerals back to it? Add up the system itself, waste water, membranes, filters, testing equipment, any resins/minerals, the needed room to mix or cost to properly dispense/mix it consistently and it sounds tough to justify.

Is TDS the big parameter we're looking at with RO? Get rid of more crap in the water PH comes down along with things like hardness?

Is there no way to filter out enough to be where we want to be without going too far (RO). Is it possible to filter down to the point where you can alter TDS without stripping it entirely?

ALOT of us have crap water we're dripping. This thread and collective understanding could benefit alot of us.

 

[jcardona1]

our ph is usually high 7s after the ro it will still be 7 or higher.plus the ro will be dripped directly how would any type of shock occur from this if their constant water dripping.i do plan on mixing myself but i really want to know if anybody has done pure ro fine with good results cause their is a few times of year that i would lke to run pure

I'm not sure what you mean. You want to run RO water only a few times a year? That will wreak havoc on your parameters. If you start using RO, you need to keep using RO. You can't just one day decide to run pure water all at once. It has to be a slow, gradual transition as you'd be quickly changing everything that the fish rely on for osmo-regulation. Water in the Amazon isn't pure like RO water. Natural water contains many trace minerals along with magnesium and calcium which make up your GH. Even though the Amazon water is soft, it still contains these minerals that are essential to fish. Discus for example, are caught in waters ranging from 10-30ppm TDS, so it's very soft, but not "pure".