RODI or not RODI?

RO/DI is much easier and the best way to go. For your 29 gal. tank you would be fine going to wal mart for distilled... I used to do that for my 90 gal. tank and it was a pain going to wal mart and filling an entire shopping cart with distilled water. Finally about a month ago I bought the spectrapure unit that one of the other people posted above at a great price. You will also probably want to upgrade to a larger tank in the future even though you may not be considering it now. Many people will agree that you will always want a larger system and in that case it would be good to have RO/DI available.

 

If you want a beautiful healthy reef use RODI, if you want a marine algae farm don't use RODI.

 

Buying distilled is an option for a small system but the cost adds up. Even at $3 a week thats $12-$15 a month plus your time and gas and you are at the mercy of the quality of the bottled water which while normally good could have its bad days.
In a years time you could have had a CSP-DI and been in complete control of your water the whole period.

diverdan, the prefilter and carbon have no effect on the final TDS but they do require 6 month replacement intervals in order to protect the RO membrane and DI resin which do remove the TDS. Make sure you disinfect the system while you have it down for replacements, it only takes about 5 minutes and is well worth it.

 

I remember you explaining this process in a previous thread. Will you post a link to that thread? Thanks

 

http://www.3reef.com/forums/water-chemistry/rodi-part-needs-replaced-first-81467.html#post803233

Cleaning procedure...funny, I was looking this up only a few hours ago.

 

Ive never used anything but tap water, and ive never had any problems!

 

Call the EPA and cask them the amount NY is paying in daily fines for being out of drinking water compliance. You might reconsider tap water even for drinking.

 

Definitely buy an RO/DI unit if you can afford it. I was buying RODI water for $.50 a gal and I bought a unit because I got tired of driving to the fish store twice a week.

I was going through more top off water though with a 100gal. Still I think you will find the easy of having the rodi in your own home is well worth the cost.

Plus you really don't have much control over the walmart water. They could rarely clean the machine or change filters and the water quality can be as bad as tap water.

 

Long ways from NY out here. Water source from the Colorado river gives 600-700 TDS. Distilled water from WalMart?

RODI is the only way to go.