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RO Water from the grocery store?

1641 Views 9 Replies 6 Participants Last post by  fishscale, 
fishscale
Has anyone seen these things before, these water stations you might find at your grocery store? You can go there and get 1, 3, or 5 gallon jugs filled for pretty cheap. It is advertised as RO filtered water. Does anyone have any experience with this? Is it really RO? I'd imagine they probably don't replace the filter very often. Does anyone with a TDS meter want to go and try it? :D

I'm thinking about using a bit in a tank. Obviously, I'm not going to go and lug 100 gallons of water around, but maybe just a little.
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mistergreen
bring your GH test kit with you and test the water.
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fishscale
I want to make a video of this. Someone find me a lab coat.

:D
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Halibass
fishscale said:
Has anyone seen these things before, these water stations you might find at your grocery store? You can go there and get 1, 3, or 5 gallon jugs filled for pretty cheap. It is advertised as RO filtered water. Does anyone have any experience with this? Is it really RO? I'd imagine they probably don't replace the filter very often. Does anyone with a TDS meter want to go and try it? :D

I'm thinking about using a bit in a tank. Obviously, I'm not going to go and lug 100 gallons of water around, but maybe just a little.
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I use it for my CRS tank. I have to refill tomorrow anyways so if I get a chance, I'll test again. If I remember correctly, the TDS was very low, in the single digits. The TDS in my tank is around 150-170 using Aquasoil. The vending machines around here are Glacier and they replace/clean the filter every 10 days to 2 weeks and the led display will actually show the last date the machine was serviced.
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RoseHawke
What Halibass said. I've used it to top off tanks with no problems that I could see, but I didn't actually test the water. We refer to that as "cat water" :hihi: as that's what I use in the cat's water fountain. And they do fairly frequent maintenance on the machine from what I can tell.
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Halibass
I tested the water today, TDS is 7.
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Halibass
RoseHawke said:
What Halibass said. I've used it to top off tanks with no problems that I could see, but I didn't actually test the water. We refer to that as "cat water" :hihi: as that's what I use in the cat's water fountain. And they do fairly frequent maintenance on the machine from what I can tell.
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Lucky cat, gets better water than me!
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yoink
I used the grocery store RO water for a long while before I got my own unit. The one I went to had a sticker with the last service date on it, it was never more than about ten days old and the water was always very pure.
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E
When my only tank was a 29 gallon tank, I used to use 50-50 grocery store RO water and tap water... tap water 'round here is liquid rock and very alkaline. Never had a problem with it. Started getting lazy after a year or so, and slowly phased it out, and now just use tapwater in my tanks. I do know other people who have at one point done it as well.
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fishscale
I plan on getting an RO unit eventually, just trying to work on a college budget and I also have moving in mind.
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