Water Filtration for the Lower Mainland

[BCOrchidGuy]

An R/O unit is a membrane filter to remove most "stuff" from your water. The membrane should be protected from Chlorine so a carbon filter before it is recommended. Alot of people use a De ionizing filter after the R/O unit to polish the water, most R/O units remove about 90% of the "stuff" from the water, but in doing so they produce about 5 gallons of waste water for every gallon of clean water produced.

I think you can run the R/O unit on a seperate plumbed fixture but you probably want to keep the membrane wet so don't let it dry out.

I don't know what most people do but I assume they don't run them 24/7 although I think if I was going to get an R/O unit I would plumb it into my water top off so that I wouldn't have to keep a reservois of water. Kent makes a top off valve that J & L sells for presurized systems and it sells for about $60.

I think replacement is based on gallons of water filtered, or when your TDS meter starts showing an increase of Dissolved solids (which wouldn't help me because our water has no dissolved solids).

I'm not aware of any major difference between the manufacturers so I can't comment on that.

You can buy the stuff to recharge your filter, not sure how much it is or how easy it is.

Yes they should be easy to install, I can't fore see any difficulties.

[Aquattro]

Intersting link

http://www.aquasafecanada.com/Tap%20Water%20System.htm

[BCOrchidGuy]

Thats not very encouraging. I know the water can get to a home fast, I've seen the pH of our water go from 7ish to 5.5 an hour after a heavy rainfall.... R/O unit I guess in the budget.....

[Scorpion]

do you guys know if the water an RO unit produces is safe for human consumption? i usually get my water from Safeway (tap-carbon-RO-UV) and i usually get 2 5gal jugs. since i don't have a huge tank... 10 is all i really need per week. but now... it's starting to get annoying. i was thinking about getting an RO unit for home and tank use. is this possible??

[Aquattro]

Yes, although some people speculate that if you drink several hundred gallons per day, it'll suck all the metals from your body. I drink it, my kids drink it, my dog drinks it. My cat drinks from the toilet...completely different story.

[BCOrchidGuy]

My cats do too, go figure....

Yes RO is safe for drinking.

[Scorpion]

oh... ok... so i don't need all that other stuff like UV filtering. just carbon - RO is fine?

thanks for the info d00ds.

oh yeah... the cat (that i don't have) also drinks out of the toilet.

[BCOrchidGuy]

UV filtering is used in biologically dirty water OR and probably better in your reef tank to keep the nasties down. Unfortuneatley it also kills benneficial bacteria etc.

I am giving some thought to a UV filter run out of my sump, just to keep the parasites etc down. I figure if I just run it from the sump back into the sump it won't be a big deal as far as killing of the goodies.

[Delphinus]

My cats don't drink out of the toilet ... in fact, they seek out my RO reservoir and drink from there whenever they can... LOL (I'm not making this up ... they must be RO snobs too )

BTW, I wouldn't run a UV on a reef tank. Maybe on a fish-only or something like that. I want my reef to replicate nature as close as I can make it ... near as I can figure there aren't UV sterilizers at any of the reefs I've dived..

[Troy F]

There are some very nice reefs out there using UV. One of the nicest I've seen is Jerel/Bomber/Spanky/landescaper's Carribean biotope and it has an enourmous UV on it. Jerel's a scientist with the NOAA and says the only place you ever hear not to run a UV on a closed system is in the hobby. FWIW Tony, not much of what happens in our tanks is happening out on the real reef.