Do you Use RODI water?

[Trigger Man]

Calgary does have some of the best water in North America, I have a close friend that used to be in charge of monitoring water quality in Canada and the US for a major company a bit back. I always used RO water in my main display tank, and my office tank that got filtered water had more algae problems.
Thinking back the reason I got started on it really came down to others who had nice setups making a good point, do I want to risk it and then have to battle the possibility of algae and other problems, or try to nip it in the butt before it appeared.
On my current tank I have moved to a RODI unit, and there are many great ones on ebay at a reasonable price now a days. I am going on over 600 g through my current one and it is still showing 0 for tds after running it for a bit (it now shows 1 for Tds for the first bit whenever I start making water), as well as 0 for copper, chlorine.

[CM125]

It seems the results are quite in favour of using it, although I wish more local people would chime in.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by CM125

It seems the results are quite in favour of using it, although I wish more local people would chime in.

You don't need locals to chime in, lots of people in Calgary use tap water. It's fine, almost always. It's "what if" you need to think about. Or, you want the absolute best you can get and don't mind spending a couple hundred bucks. Can you run a reef without RO? Sure. Will it be fine forever? Ya, likely. Will something in the water kill all your corals one day? Could happen So you decide how much risk you're willing to go with.

[SteveConn]

...but wouldnt it be nice if we could keep the Calcium and hardness of Calgary water!

I'm in deep SE Calgary. TDS is high 200's. Sure go through DI resin fast. I found I need dual DI canisters to get my TDS down to zero.

Keeping my spent DI resin to recharge once I have enough to make it worth the hassle. See how well that works.

[Karsten]

I live in NW Calgary.

I always have used RO (2-5ppm tds) or RODI (0-1ppm tds). I didn't see a difference.

My tap water right now reads over 200ppm tds.

Hope this helps

[crimper]

I used to raised/bred Discus, the most sensitive fresh water fish that you could ever keep. Most discus keepers use RO/DI as discus is very sensitive to Chlorine and Chloramine, however based on my experience water here at the Lower Mainland is almost pure and Chlorine is the only thing that you need to watch out during Winter/Spring months.

A pinch of Prime during Winter/Spring time is all I use.

[Travillion]

Originally Posted by crimper

I used to raised/bred Discus, the most sensitive fresh water fish that you could ever keep. Most discus keepers use RO/DI as discus is very sensitive to Chlorine and Chloramine, however based on my experience water here at the Lower Mainland is almost pure and Chlorine is the only thing that you need to watch out during Winter/Spring months.

A pinch of Prime during Winter/Spring time is all I use.

This is true, our tap water is brilliant. Especially Richmond's (less time traveling through pipes). Tested at only 12TDS, and didn't even register for chlorines.

However, I switched to RO/DI water a couple of months ago. I switched without knowing what our tap water was really like, I just assumed my tanks could benefit from higher quality water. I would actually still stick with my decision though. I ran a waste bucket for the first few weeks as a comparison, and let me tell you, that water STUNK, while the reservoir water had no scent and registered 0TDS. Even though we have very clean water, there are still clearly some nitrates floating around in there that could have an impact. I would also like to include that since making the switch, an algae problem has drastically decreased.

All that having been said, I have been keeping freshwater for nearly 10 years without RO/DI (obviously not as substantial of an ordeal), and never even questioned my water quality.

[gobytron]

Pretty easy to see what's in your water...

http://www.calgary.ca/UEP/Water/Page...arameters.aspx