Question about ro di water

I have been in the hobby for about 2 years and I think I finally want to make the leap to saltwater. I have had African cichlids and I just can't get my eye off of how awesome corals and salt water fish look. I have been doing lots of reading, I even got a book on learning about this hobby. The part I am sort of torn/confused about is what is a good ro di system to use? Is it completely necessary when fed off of tap water? What are good brands? A guy I work with was going to sell me one but than told me about something new called a gravity fed sterilizer. Any comments or feedback please? Thanks

 

Spectrapure is arguably the best brand for ro/di....There is this model that goes for like 125 or so that azdesertrat always recommends. (hes the ro/di guru)

 

I have a BRS 5-Stage plus unit. Great bang for your buck at $199. Comes with every type of fitting that you could imagine to hook it up to a water supply. It also comes equipped with a TDS meter and membrane flush kit.

 

I concur, the BRS units are nice. I have their 5 stage one.

I don't know what the gravity sterilizer one is tho...

 

Spectrapure is great as well as bulkreefsupply.com and buckeyefieldsupply.com

Not sure what ya mean by the gravity fed sterilizer stopping you from buying a RODI unit?? But here is an old thread about how to make a uv sterilizer gravity fed

http://www.3reef.com/forums/filters...zer-plumbing-help-needed-page-2-a-127671.html
But IMO, a RODI is going to save you a TON of money and hassle over the long haul of a tank. It will help prevent major algae outbreaks as well as keep other contaminants out of your tank.

I'll see if I can find the link to the spectra pure sale.

Edit http://spectrapure.com/St_RODI-REFURB.htm

 

+1 on the spectrapure, you may need to run some teflon tape around the threads in order to get a good seal other than that, I have had no other issues with mine.

 

Well it's not holding me back from getting it. The thing I didn't like about what he told me is that his ro/di filter really wastes alot of water. Is that something that I am going to have to just deal with?

 

Yes. You can get low waste ones though

 

The rejected water doesn't necessarily have to be wasted; you can collect it for other uses, such as laundry, watering potted plants or garden, etc.

 

The standard RO/DI wastes 4 gallons for every 1 gallon of treated water, this is necessary to carry the brine or concentrated TDS removed from that treated gallon out and away from the membrane.

Spectrapure is number one when it comes to reef quality systems with over 25 years of research and development behind them. They do not just slap a system together using off the shelf parts, they hold many patents, copyrights and trademarks for all the work they have put into the process.
You can pick up their refurbished system with all new high quality filters and custom blended reef specific DI resins for $128 on sale now. No other vendor treats and tests their RO membranes or blends every ounce of their DI resins based on tens of thousands of hours of both real world and bench testing.

My next choice would be Buckeye Field Supply, the rest are further down the list in my book.

Forget the flush kits, they are a waste of money with no proven value other than to lighten your wallet and give you a warm fuzzy feeling. If you want value add a DI bypass so you can flush the TDS creep out which a flush kit does not do since it is on the waste side of the membrane not the treated side. Most people misunderstand this. I would also highly recommend a good handheld TDS meter not inlines as they are not as accurate and cannot be used portable. To troubleshoot a RO/DI system you need 3 TDS readings not two, tap water, RO only and RO/DI, the inlines only give you two and lack the low end accuracy since they are not truly temperature compensated and monitor air temperature which is rarely the same as water temperature so has built in error.