Whats A Ro Machine ?
- Thread starter Youngie90
- Start date
sjcneedshelp321
Fish Fanatic
Do you mean a reverse osmosis machine? i think basically it takes tap water and removes all the bad chemicals and metals. hope that was what u were talking about?
my fat fish
Fish Addict
now thta sounds good wher wold you get 1 of them and how much?
sjcneedshelp321
Fish Fanatic
Im not rrrrrrreally sure i think they might be quite expensive, i might b wrong here. i know that my lfs has one and they sell r.o water. one of the tff sponsers is about osmotics, might want to check that out. sorry i dont know that much about this whole thing.
my fat fish
Fish Addict
okay well i doubt ill be getting one but would be fumand make things easyer
Reverse Osmosis water:
the good: It is essentially a blank palette in that the overwhelming majority of minerals are taken out of the water. In this way, you have to put a salt mixture back into the water, because all living things need minerals and they get a large amount of them from their water. In fact, if you don't put minerals back in, the water will leech minerals back out of the fish (or you if you drink it.) But, you get to pick what minerals to put back in, so you can tailor your water to match almost any body of water in the world. You can re-create the waters of the African Rift Lakes, the ocean (which marine keepers use RO water for), the acidic rivers of the Amazon, etc.
By definition, pure water has a pH of 7.0, which is why many people with hard alkaline water use it to keep Amazon Basin species, like discus.
The bad: The good units are expensive. They use membranes that have to be replaced, which also are not cheap. The salt mixtures you have to put back in aren't free either.
The ratio of RO water produced to water discarded can be pretty bad, somewhere around 1 gallon of RO yielded for every 3-8 gallon of tap water put in, so unless you can use that extra water, your water bill will be higher from the waste.
Because the water is so pure, it will have no buffering capability. So, the salt mixtures you add have to include some buffering capability otherwise the end products of the cycle will cause a pH crash. You can't store RO water in just anything, again because it is so pure almost any chemical will try to dissolve iself in it, including the materials of the container you try to store it in.
So, you have to balance cost versus need. If you need water tailored for a specific chemistry, then this may be the way to go. On the other hand, almost every fish (research!) can adapt itself to a wide variety of waters, so long as the water stats are constant. If you use pH adjusting chemicals, the pH can bounce around and that is far worse for the fish than having a constant pH that may be somewhat outside their native waters' range. Again, this is where research has to be done before purchase of fish. Chances are, someone on this forum has kept that ifsh before, so ask around.
p.s. It is rather bad form to post the exact same question in two different subforums, it is just easier to answer the question in one and only one thread
the good: It is essentially a blank palette in that the overwhelming majority of minerals are taken out of the water. In this way, you have to put a salt mixture back into the water, because all living things need minerals and they get a large amount of them from their water. In fact, if you don't put minerals back in, the water will leech minerals back out of the fish (or you if you drink it.) But, you get to pick what minerals to put back in, so you can tailor your water to match almost any body of water in the world. You can re-create the waters of the African Rift Lakes, the ocean (which marine keepers use RO water for), the acidic rivers of the Amazon, etc.
By definition, pure water has a pH of 7.0, which is why many people with hard alkaline water use it to keep Amazon Basin species, like discus.
The bad: The good units are expensive. They use membranes that have to be replaced, which also are not cheap. The salt mixtures you have to put back in aren't free either.
The ratio of RO water produced to water discarded can be pretty bad, somewhere around 1 gallon of RO yielded for every 3-8 gallon of tap water put in, so unless you can use that extra water, your water bill will be higher from the waste.
Because the water is so pure, it will have no buffering capability. So, the salt mixtures you add have to include some buffering capability otherwise the end products of the cycle will cause a pH crash. You can't store RO water in just anything, again because it is so pure almost any chemical will try to dissolve iself in it, including the materials of the container you try to store it in.
So, you have to balance cost versus need. If you need water tailored for a specific chemistry, then this may be the way to go. On the other hand, almost every fish (research!) can adapt itself to a wide variety of waters, so long as the water stats are constant. If you use pH adjusting chemicals, the pH can bounce around and that is far worse for the fish than having a constant pH that may be somewhat outside their native waters' range. Again, this is where research has to be done before purchase of fish. Chances are, someone on this forum has kept that ifsh before, so ask around.
p.s. It is rather bad form to post the exact same question in two different subforums, it is just easier to answer the question in one and only one thread
Similar threads
Most reactions
-
292 -
218 -
217 -
181 -
172 -
170 -
144 -
131 -
128 -
121 -
115 -
108 -
104 -
95 -
94