RO question?

[kallmond]

I just picked up a 150, and i'm thinking of making it a discus tank. The problem is I'm at 7.2 - 7.6 ph, and my water is so hard they use it to cut diamonds.

I'd like to have a drip system on this tank, as its going in the wall in my basement, and the tank will be directly below plumbing.

The hard/high ph water is easily fixed with RO water. Creating an RO drip system is my question. The smallest RO machine I can find is 35 gpd. I know they work by pressure right? so if I turn the water down, will the RO unit slow its output or just cease to function? How many gallons am I looking at before I need to replace the membrane? Whats the waste-water to RO water ratio? Can anything be done with the waste water?

Is there something I'm not thinking about?

 

[epond83]

I'm not an expert on RO but yes the output will decresse with pressure, but the output will stop without enough pressure.

I believe it was on the filter guys website they have a set up that runs the waste water through a second membrane and this reducess a lot of wasewater.

Also i think the membrane is good for like 5 years as long as it stays wet cause it doesn't filter like a sponge more like a strainer and the waste waters flushes it, it's the other parts on like a 5 or 6 stage system that are based on water usage.

Also is pure RO water fine to use or do you need to add a little something to it, this way it's better then your tap water but not stripped completely of everything.

Could have a barrel that slowly pumps water for a drip system and that getts filled and mixed every so often.

 

[kallmond]

In my head I was thinking that i'd use a 1 drip/minute RO and 2 drips/minute regular water kind of mixture to maintain the right hardness/ph. Obviously that would take some testing and tweaking to get the parameters right.

It might be easier to RO one day per week, top off with tap water to a specified amount, and use that to drip. If I went on vacation I could just turn the whole thing off.

Are RO machines designed to run 24/7? or can you run them like 1 day per week?

 

[12 Volt Man]

you only really need to use the RO to 'cut' the tap water if:

1. you are interested in keeping wilds

or

2. interested in spawning the discus.

otherwise, domestic (tank bred) strains of discus will do perfectly fine in that pH range.

my water is the same, for example, and I have kept discus off and on for years.

the domestic strains (eg. cobalts, pigeon bloods etc) are used to average tap water, and are not so fussy as wilds can be.

simplydiscus.com is a great resource that I used to frequent the last time the discus bug bit me

 

[kallmond]

Thats a great site 12 volt man, thanks for that. I'm still a little indecisive about it, but they sure look interesting