[ChiefIFD]

HI; Reverse Osmosis, is there anyone using it for there system? I have hard well water that comes from a city water supply. I'm looking for a more stable and uniform water supply. I know I need to pre-heat the water prior to entering the reverse osmosis system and possibily use a water softner because of iron in the water. Anyone have any experence with a reverse osmosis system? By the way I have a 75 gallon aquaruim and have Malawi cichlids.

[Sandra Linkletter]

The nice thing about cichlids from Lake Malawi is that hard water is their ideal environment. If you bothered to use RO water for your tank you would just have to buy bottled stuff and put back what you took out, or mix up your own.

In answer to your question, I have very hard, alkaline water and my RO unit was very wasteful because we do not have a water softener. With so much calcium carbonate in our wellwater, our drinking water would taste salty if we used a water softener, so we don't use one. The reason I had RO was was originally to keep a saltwater reef tank. When I went back to freshwater after two years of sweating power outages, I tried to keep softwater cichlids. It was a mess. It was extremely unstable due to the hardness of any water I had available to mix with the water output by the RO unit. Ever since then I have vowed to stick with fish I can keep in my water as it comes from the faucet, with perhaps some salt added if I decide to try brackish.

RO water makes great coffee, BTW, and your perculator doesn't get scale all over it.

Slink's Burrow Online