Media recommendations prefilter water
- Thread starter jft
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blaxsun
10K Club member
Without knowing the size of your tank it's hard to recommend options based on your RO requirements. You don't want to use tap water, and you definitely want to use RO filtered water. There are many companies (including fish stores) that provide this service.
resortez
Active Member
Depends what is your end goal, what type of system you’re building, reef, fish only? Try looking for a water store near you that sells RO water. Most LFS sell RO. Get yourself a TDS meter if you haven’t already, come in handy when testing TDS in RO from the stores.
blaxsun
10K Club member
With a 125-gallon tank, assuming regular water changes every 2 weeks plus RO topup you're looking at 35-50 gallons of RO per month. That's a lot of lugging around 5-gallon water jugs...
I wouldn't necessarily advocate for dropping water changes altogether, but you could look at reducing the frequency. Short of buying your RO water and physically transporting it - I think your only option is a small RODI system. Something like the RO Buddie system is reasonably compact and portable.
50 GPD 3-Stage RO Buddie Reverse Osmosis System
Description The AQUATICLIFE RO Buddie is a three-stage RO/DI unit designed for residential use to reduce the Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) in tap water. Each RO Buddie includes a Sediment, Carbon and cartridge. Useful applications include smaller aquariums, fountains, humidifiers and more. With...
aquaticlife.com
resortez
Active Member
Fish only. Honestly in my experience I’ve kept & still have fish only tanks with straight tap water without treating it & I live in an old building built in the 1910s so plumbing is old. To this day no issues but I do keep a pretty dim lighting setup, cheap LEDs to avoid excess algae growth. Tank runs on a fluval fx5, the big boy & I do keep a good amount of carbon & tons of bio media in the canister. Kept it like this for over 10 years & no issues. Yes it’s saltwater, sand & lace rock I bought at a quarry for $0.35/lb. It’s how I was thought to build them when I was a kid in the 90s. Again, this is my own experience & things can differ for others but it has worked for me. Not recommending my personal approach but straight tap has work for me. Good luck
Natural_Reefer
Active Member
Do you have a laundry room? If you do, just get a splitter and one of this to hook up your RO/DI water. The drain line go straight the washer drain.
I know you said you can't have it due to rules but do they really gonna come in your apt and check
I know you said you can't have it due to rules but do they really gonna come in your apt and check
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jft
Well-Known Member
Thanks So there is no media placed in a Canister or hang on back filter to Prefilter Nitatrates Po4 Etc, Doesn t Mke sense if so called Media in Aquarium filters Filter out organics PO4 Silicates Etc, Plesase clarify.
jft
Well-Known Member
NO Laundry room Small apartment just fits 125 gallon tank
blaxsun
10K Club member
Nope. Just run it off your bathroom sink... If they're letting you keep a 125-gallon tank I can't understand why they wouldn't let you run a RODI system (most people have one for drinking).
jft
Well-Known Member
Yeah might have to go this route
Natural_Reefer
Active Member
I
I see. But you could do this if you have a sink and a faucet.
BZOFIQ
5000 Club Member
See post #91 here
www.reef2reef.com
QUESTION OF THE DAY - TAP TAP TAP: Come on be honest....TAP Water?
I make my own pure water combining liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen in my backyard....my neighbors hate me
www.reef2reef.com
Spare time
10K Club member
Zero water filters can do up to 40 gallons and you can probably make a diy version of them. They are rather expensive but produce 0tds. They use a mechanical filter + carbon + DI resin. You can make this yourself but still you burn through DI resin very quickly. As a last resort, you could run tap water through some diy tube with carbon, GFO, and DI resin mixed in (or at least the carbon and GFO; maybe even a polyfilter).
TokenReefer
Valuable Member
What does your kitchen faucet look like? Can you remove the diffuser?
Spare time
10K Club member
PS you can also mix in cuprisorb to a mix into some diy filter to help remove metals. Remember, you would want the water to go through slowly. Cuprisorb+quality carbon + GFO ( and maybe something like a polyfilter) would remove quite a bit of the bad items out of the water. You just want to have decent contact time between the water and media. Something like one of those 5 gallon jugs that go on top of a water dispenser could work and you would just filter the water from the sink through that into a bucket. Again, not very convenient but its probably the best diy filter you could make and you'd still be able to have corals with that water. I would also push you to go the route of very little water changes (a very good refugium, element replacement, rox carbon, icp every few months maybe, and a wide variety of test kits similar to my setup). This would help as water changes would be a pain.
