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RO units and plant tanks?

2K views 15 replies 11 participants last post by  jmiz16 
#1 ·
How many people here use RO units with a freshwater plant tank? Why use them? What is the point, what is the benefit?
 
#3 ·
I use an RO unit because I had extremely hard water (KH over 15 and GH over 18). I wanted to keep the water slightly acidic and doing that with CO2 and such a high KH was using lots of CO2...

Recently though the tap water has gone down to reasonable levels of hardness so I'm going to stop using it.

Some people have water with all sorts of junk in it and need an RO unit to get rid of it. Here I'm talking about very high nitrates, metals, etc.
 
#7 ·
I use RO water because the city water is some compilation of many different sources - two separate water treatment plants & 3 different wells - and they change often (being a part of Zone 7 water agency) too often. One month everything will be great and the next month, pH runs high, nitrates are high, GH is WAY high, ect. Inconsistancy makes it difficult to achieve anything close to a routine way to treat the tap water for the tank... so at least with RO water I know what I'm getting.
 
#10 ·
I run RO, no DI , Robert. I mix in some tap water to build the RO back up. For a 30G waterchange on my 75G, my ratio is 17G RO to 13G tap. That gives me a pH of 7.1 and a KH of 3. My GH is 8. The PO4 at waterchange is .25ppm so I bump it up to 1ppm and the NO3 is at 5ppm, I add KNO3 to get it up to 10. I dose 5ml of Flourish and then 4ml Flourish Iron.

Mike
 
#15 ·
I don't use RO Water, but I might as well be. Less than 1 degree KH/GH out of tap. I buffer it with sodium bicarbonate and seachem's equillibrium to bring up the KH/GH. I have noticed that Greg Watson is carrying calcium now though, so I might just start mixing up my own equillibrium to help cut costs.

Matt
 
#16 ·
I mix 1/4 RO TO 3/4 tap. This gives me PH around 7.4 which is managable for my CO2 injection (which pulls it down to 7.1)and makes my wild scalare angels and discus a little happier. I think my discus would like me to do a 1/2 1/2 split.
I think people use RO more for the fish than the plants
 
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