Reverse osmosis.

[Lido]

So I have been using tap for my fish, I have noticed the quality of the fish overall happiness has gone down. So I took the plunge Nd put a 275 gallon water storage tank. I am going to run my RO unit on an ATO system and keep it full. Additionally I am starting to build out my breeding racks and want to make the move to wilds for my show tank eventually.

With that being said I have a few questions for the guys using straight RO.

1. What are you adding to your water to re-mineralize it?

2. How much of it are you dosing.

3. How much water and how often are you changing it.

4. Anything I am missing?

[Willie]

We've had lots of discussions on this topic previously and not everyone agrees with my approach. I did 100% R/O and stopped adding minerals back. At the time, I was making 100% W/C twice a week. Both adults and fry grew well under these conditions. Other people insist on remineralizing. To each his own...

The most important aspect for discus is the consistency of water quality. I have a Merlin system so making R/O was a relatively quick affair. If you were to blend, just make sure it's always exactly the same. No fish will survive constantly changing water parameters.

Willie

[DJW]

The thing is, not all RO is created equal. I see people say that their RO has 5 ppm, 10... 20... even 100ppm of TDS! Given that, the question becomes... If calcium is needed, what is the minimum amount? And then you have to consider whether you are talking about adults or fry.

I use RO out of necessity, and add minerals to a TDS of anywhere from 20 to 150 ppm depending on what I'm doing. I have used Kent Marine RO Right and Seachem Equilibrium in the past, but now I make my own.

Willie, I have tested RO Right and it is mostly monovalent cations as you have suspected.

I change water every day so I don't worry about the pH falling. If you don't change a lot of water this becomes something you have to contend with by adding some sort of buffer.

[Coralsandfish]

I am also interested as I just setup my ro and was wondering about ro and ro di differences and effect