RO VS DISTILLED

[brady]

Is RO water and the distilled water I can buy in the grocery store the same?
Jay

[pcsb23]

Technically no. Practically yes.

[John_Nicholson]

Distilled is basically 100% H20, Ro still has at least a small percentage of other stuff still in it. A bigger question is why do you need either one?

-john

[XAnhLe]

Distilled water = from distillation

RO water = from reverse osmosis

Different purification methods.

Both have very minimal amount of impurities. Distilled is better, but the difference is too small to even matter in most applications.

[YSS]

I believe DI water is even more pure than Distilled water. :)

[brady]

Distilled is basically 100% H20, Ro still has at least a small percentage of other stuff still in it. A bigger question is why do you need either one?

-john

John
I'm entertaining getting some wilds and I was just curious. If I do go the wilds route I will get a RO set up.
Jay

[07rx8gt]

I found while doing saltwater reef tanks that the stuff at the store in the machines are no where close to being as clean as they advertise. Buy yourself an RO unit from Bulk Reef Supply and enjoy.

[nc0gnet0]

I believe DI water is even more pure than Distilled water. :)

It depends on the process's and quality controls of each actually. A bottle of distilled water will normally be more "pure" than that of product water from our simple RODI units. However, in industry, a real good RODI will produce as good of water as distilled.

For all intensive purposes they can ve viewed as the same.

RO water will still have a small amount of trace elements. This is all that is ever needed in discus breeding, through out the DI stage, better yet, replace it with another carbon block.

[Larry Bugg]

John
I'm entertaining getting some wilds and I was just curious. If I do go the wilds route I will get a RO set up.
Jay


Jay, what are your water params?

[brady]

[QUOTE=Larry Bugg;1119469]Jay, what are your water params
Larry, I'm on well water in a semi rual area.
As measured by my local extension service,
PH- 6.8
GH-100
Nitrates-0
Nitrites- less then 5
AMMONIA- 0
All other minerals well within acceptable limits.
Taste- I could sell it as bottled water. lol
I do a direct w/c 2x/day only equalizing the temp. on my discus.
Thank you
Jay

[Larry Bugg]

Pretty hard thus the need for R/O with wilds. Gotcha.

[XAnhLe]

Pretty hard thus the need for R/O with wilds. Gotcha.

What is an acceptable parameters for wilds? I really want to get some wilds in the future. My gH reading is about 85.

[YSS]

It depends on the process's and quality controls of each actually. A bottle of distilled water will normally be more "pure" than that of product water from our simple RODI units. However, in industry, a real good RODI will produce as good of water as distilled.

For all intensive purposes they can ve viewed as the same.


I was under the impression that DI water has less impurities than distilled water. So, you are saying I can just buy distilled water from the grocery store instead of getting DI water from the water dispenser?

[XAnhLe]

I was under the impression that DI water has less impurities than distilled water. So, you are saying I can just buy distilled water from the grocery store instead of getting DI water from the water dispenser?

Not less, but different impurities. DI water remove ions, and distill water remove nonvolatile solid and liquid from water. Distillation is based on boiling point. It will remove most of the heavy metals and some organic compounds that have higher boiling point than water, but it won't remove compounds that have lower boiling point or almost similar BP to water. DI water will not remove non-ionized organic compounds. Both process have its weaknesses and strengths. Usually people use a combination of different techniques, like RO/DI.

[pcsb23]

I was under the impression that DI water has less impurities than distilled water. So, you are saying I can just buy distilled water from the grocery store instead of getting DI water from the water dispenser?Once you get to the stage of using RO water or DI water or distilled water you needn't worry over the small amount of stuff left in the water. You will need to add some minerals back.

[brady]

I started this thread and am very grateful for all the input.
But I have 1 question, what is DI water? From what I read it's different from distilled and RO or have I missed something?
Jay

[XAnhLe]

I started this thread and am very grateful for all the input.
But I have 1 question, what is DI water? From what I read it's different from distilled and RO or have I missed something?
Jay

DI = Deionized. Water go through an ion exchange column, which have beads that bind to ions, thus removing it from water.

[dleblanc]

You can get a RO unit cheap, and this is often what we use to make nicer drinking water for home use. RO == reverse osmosis. Better units add DI (de-ionization) as a second stage, and it takes more things out. For example, if you have nitrates coming in from your well (I do from mine in the winter), DI is all that will remove them. Same is true with some other ionized compounds.

I have a staging barrel that I make the water into, aerate it, bring it up to temperature, and then add back in some alkalinity and bring up the GH. If you have water with near zero alkalinity, then the pH can swing a lot with very minor changes, and this makes fish unhappy. In my case, I have plants, and plants like to see about 4 degrees KH, so I keep it there. I've never kept wilds, so ask someone else what they like.

Having had a really nasty algae bloom due to my source water changing on me, I'm really happy to remove source water as a variable - whatever it does, the water in the staging barrel is what I make it. It is a fairly expensive investment, but one I'm happy I made. I went with SpectraPure, seems to be good stuff.

[kris2341]

top quality distilled water is pretty much equivalent to quality RODI water, both measure a big fat 0 on the TDS meter.

regular RO water is a step down from these two.