Thoughts on switching to RO filtered water?

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Draygen

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Nov 9, 2009
23
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Washington DC
So here's where I'm interested in your opinions. I've recently added discus to my tank and the LFS peoples are swearing by RO water changes when keeping discus. However I've done some web crawling and there's mixed opinions on using RO with rays. I would like to use something beyond treated tap water with them and the discus but now I'm concerned it may impact the rays. They're more of my concern at this point than the discus. Improving the water quality in general is ultimately the goal of this whole plan. I've been using treated tap water now with my two retics for over a year and they seem to be doing very well. This is what I've been thinking of switching to. Slowly of course changing them from there normal treated tap water to 5 stage reef ro filtered water. Of course the major issue seems to be the stripping of nutrients which I was thinking of using brightwell blackwater discus treatment and salt additives to remedy that. Do any of you use RO filtered water or have opinions or experience with this that might help me out?

Thanks!!
 
I have never used RO with my rays, but I have kept rays and discus together using regular tap water with no problems at all. The rays were happy and so were the discus. HTH
 
i use ro water and havent had any problems with my ray, i wouldnt say i have enough experience to guide you which is best but i do know when keeping discuss and plecs ro is always recommended for prolonging the fishes life span, well thats what the shops say lol
 
R/O water has practically no minerals (generally it reduces about 95% of the normal mineral content), which are an important part of fish growth, especially bones, teeth, and scales. That being said, a lot of minerals are gotten from food consumption. I have an R/O unit myself but never really gotten around to using it for WC's.
 
Thank you for the feedback. I'm partly considering this to maybe make life a bit easier on water changes as well. I live in an apartment and change about 20% of the water a week. Right now I'm conditioning the water, leaving it sit 24 hours in the living room and then adding it the next day. If I go ro then I can just run a line from the filter directly to the tank and turn it on when I need to either top off the tank or do water changes. Add additives weekly and not have to worry about having water buckets hanging around haha.
 
I've been doing 2 x 30% water changes a week for many years now using 50:50 RO water to tap water. The Nitrates are around 40ppm where I live in the UK, so the use of RO means I'm only adding water at 20ppm. Also the use of some tap water rather than 100% RO gives me protection against a PH crash.

My rays seem to appreciate this regime .... five Leo pups last April !

Martin
 
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