Making the right water

[Shiggs]

I want some opinions on how to make perfect clean water for your aquarium. Let me know what you use and what you ad to your fresh and salt water.

Also what is a good RO/DI unit. I live in an apartment so no hose access.

Thank you for any help.

 

[redfishbluefish]

Either of these two are quality units at a fair price:

Spectrapure Refurbished

Spectrapure with extra filters and TDS meter

As far as hooking it up, use a faucet adaptor. It simply screws onto the end of your faucet when you need to make water.

 

[Shiggs]

Do you add anything to your water?

 

[Sabellafella]

I want some opinions on how to make perfect clean water for your aquarium. Let me know what you use and what you ad to your fresh and salt water.

Also what is a good RO/DI unit. I live in an apartment so no hose access.

Thank you for any help.

They also have attachments you can pierce into ur cold water plumbing under your sink . brs and marine depot have deals constantly on rodi units. Also you can get one used in a local forum or on r2r marketplace. Enjoy

 

[redfishbluefish]

I'm not sure what you are asking? I use city water to run through my RO/DI. I then take that water and mix it with salt to make fresh saltwater. So Yes, I add salt to my water.

 

[Shiggs]

Lol ok I mean like any trace elements or buffers

 

[redfishbluefish]

Oh! I do test for and add alkalinity (sodium carbonate), calcium (calcium chloride) and magnesium (magnesium chloride/magnesium sulfate) to my tank. The alkalinity and calcium are added multiple times a day using dosing pumps. Otherwise trace elements are included in the salt mix. I do 25 gallon water change every two weeks. That's on a 90 gallon DT with a 40 gallon sump.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I want some opinions on how to make perfect clean water for your aquarium. Let me know what you use and what you ad to your fresh and salt water.

Also what is a good RO/DI unit. I live in an apartment so no hose access.

Thank you for any help.

Most people use RO/DI to purify tap water. I discuss it in detail here:

Reverse Osmosis/Deionization Systems to Purify Tap Water for Reef Aquaria by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-05/rhf/index.htm

Generally, most folks do not add anything to the fresh water once purified, unless they are just using it as a vehicle for dosing supplements that the aquarium needs. So they can use that to repalce evaporated water. i do that witgh limewater (kalkwasser). Fresh water does not need any buffering to be used to repalce evaporated water, however.

A relatively small proportion of people add additional calcium or magnesium to salt mixes if they are using a low calcium salt mix (such as Instant Ocean). I have done that in the past, but no longer do so.