Ro/di units on ebay?

Headlessnwalkin · Jul 15, 2011

Ok after a long while I've got a little cash and was looking at some of the cheaper units on ebay do they work decently, or should I save some more money and get a higher dollar one. I honestly need about 5gal. A week for my 55gal. will the cheapies be effeciant for what I am planning. Please any advice would be highly appreciated. I know nothing about them at all.

AZDesertRat · Jul 16, 2011

With RO/DI you get what you pay for and cheap is not where you want to be.
You probably cannot beat the $120 deal on a Spectrapure right now, even with an ebay unit:
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For $120 you are getting the best brand in the business with a treated and tested RO membrane, 0.5 micron absolute rated prefilter, 0.5 micron 20,000 gallon carbon block, custom blended mixed bed DI resin, an inline pressure gauge and a capillary tube flow restrictor. You won't find all that anywhere else at any price. All you need is the $25 hand held TDS meter and you are in business.

fish&corals · Jul 16, 2011

hey there head .. i bought my RODI unit at air water and ice cost me under 100.00 for a mighty mite .. it does 50 GPD works great plus buying off e bay .. you dont know what the TDs is at .. how old the filters are .. what kind of water was run through it .. if you say spend 50.00 for a unit and you have to spend more money on new filters for it then your going to be looking at a 100 for it . might as well buy brand new and it comes with everything ... plus air water and ice always have good sales going on .

RaysReef · Jul 16, 2011

Mighty Mite doesn't pull everything down to 0 ppm. We just had a member in our club test one out with the new R/O DI unit version 50 GPD and the TDS show 270 ppm before and down to 15 ppm after it filtered through. I say spend the extra $20 and get a bigger canister unit *Cartridge*, the mighty mite is great if you don't have the space but the bigger filter canister and membrane will have better results and less changing inbetween.

AZDesertRat · Jul 16, 2011

With small units like the Mighty Mite you give up important features like a refillable DI cartridge and full size filters which work much better and make the unit last longer. You also do not get an inline pressure gauge which is very important for troubleshooting the system and no capillary tube flow restrictor or TDS meter.

Small, nonstandard replacement filters are harder to find, do not come in most of the more efficient and desireable micron ranges, cost more to replace and do not last as long since they have less filtering surface.

Really not a good deal at all plus they are not that much smaller since they use the same bracket so are just a few inches shorter is all. I'd pass myself since it will be a much higher cost of ownership and does not filter as well.