RODI Waste Contamination

TN_Reefer · May 1, 2023

Hello,
I am new hear, and I've used this forum to get up to speed. I recently made a mistake when mixing salt water... having some RODI waste water enter into the mix for just about a minute. I'm wondering if i've contaminated my batch of saltwater.

I use a 40 gallon brute can to mix my saltwater. I use a 4-stage RODI unit & aquarium salt with a refractometer to get to ideal salinity. I ran the RODI waste water mistakenly, for probably less than one minute, but it entered into the existing mixed, clean salt water (approx 35 gallon). I was about 1.027 salinity, so I wanted to bring it down a little but mistakenly put the waste line in... instead of the clean.

My question is do I need to dump all of the existing water due to contamination? Or this sub-minute RODI waste water (likely .1-.2 gallons max) will be diluted by the ~35 gallons of clean water in my can? If contaminated, can I treat it with chlorine to be safe?

Thanks,
Colin

vetteguy53081 · May 1, 2023

TN_Reefer said:
Hello,
I am new hear, and I've used this forum to get up to speed. I recently made a mistake when mixing salt water... having some RODI waste water enter into the mix for just about a minute. I'm wondering if i've contaminated my batch of saltwater.

I use a 40 gallon brute can to mix my saltwater. I use a 4-stage RODI unit & aquarium salt with a refractometer to get to ideal salinity. I ran the RODI waste water mistakenly, for probably less than one minute, but it entered into the existing mixed, clean salt water (approx 35 gallon). I was about 1.027 salinity, so I wanted to bring it down a little but mistakenly put the waste line in... instead of the clean.

My question is do I need to dump all of the existing water due to contamination? Or this sub-minute RODI waste water (likely .1-.2 gallons max) will be diluted by the ~35 gallons of clean water in my can? If contaminated, can I treat it with chlorine to be safe?

Thanks,
Colin

Youre fine. While its called waste- Its not one that is toxic waste. I use waste water for gardening and my house plants.

A_Blind_Reefer · May 1, 2023

Without knowing what’s in your water supply I would just start over. Depending on what salt you use it’s pretty cheap to make 35 gallons and you have no worries.

Gtinnel · May 1, 2023

Without knowing whats in your water it’s impossible to know how risky it is to use the water, but if it were me I would use it. I would assume anything bad in that small amount of waste water would be diluted to the point where it isn’t significant.

Randy Holmes-Farley · May 2, 2023

I expect it is most likely fine. It's equivalent to using less than a gallon of tap water to make that 35 gallons. So any contaminant is about 35x lower than in the tap water. Not many things that are in drinkable water are still a problem 35 x lower. The only possibility that I can think of is copper, if your home tap water is among those few that are very high in copper.