RO or City of Edmonton Water?

[midgetwaiter]

Originally Posted by rocketlily

One store told me never to use RO water, as it does not contain any minerals.

Potentially a serious issue for freshwater tanks but not applicable for marine tanks.

Originally Posted by rocketlily

Another store told me to only use RO water and a high quality reef salt which adds the minerals, never, never use Edmonton water as it is too high in ammonia levels.

Kind of true but not the whole picture. You won't see practically any free ammonia in tap water here. You don't find any free chlorine either, they treat the water with chloramine which is chlorine and ammonia bonded together. Some decholrinator products do not do an adequate job of dealing with chloramine so if you go with tap water make sure you use something good like Prime. Bad ones break the bond but don't deal with the ammonia correctly, hence the ammonia concern.

A basic RO unit also can have issues with chloramine. You should really use a unit that has quality carbon prefilters and a post RO Deionization (DI) stage. This will also remove things like phosphate and silicate from the water

Seeing as though you are on a well though getting an RO/DI unit to perform well can be a real problem. Depending on how much stuff is in the source water you may have to add extra prefilter stages for sediment. If your dissolved solids level in the well water is too high (I saw 2500 ppm recently) you may have to use 2 RO membranes together so you don't exhaust your DI cartridges too quickly. Water pressure may also be an issue, RO membranes work well at 50 psi and higher. On a well you may need a booster pump to get that. This could add up to a significant cost, like $700.

All things considered you may be better off with city water. If you want to investigate setting up an RO/DI unit pm me and I'll give you a hand.