Reverse Osmosis Water

[cjdooley]

My tank has been up for over a year now, and I have never used water conditioner, except for when I first set it up. Instead I use reverse osmosis water for everything; water changes, cleaning, that kind of thing. The fish have never seemed to mind, and the water is always crystal clear and tests out perfectly for nitrate, nitrite, chlorine, etc. I was just curious, does anyone else do this? :ssmile:

[rageybug]

Many SW tanks are filled with RO/DI water. It is safer but not required.

[Spardas]

I only use RO/DI if I wish to breed fishes.

The thing is that the filtration system will remove all traces of thing in the tap and that will also include minerals that can make the fish grow. Now, that's not too much of an issue for a SW setup because the salt mix contains the necessary trace elements as well as the addition of the trace mix from time to time. The same can be said for freshwater planted tanks so people can monitor what kind of minerals they want in the water and what they don't want. But for the most part, a basic tank doesn't require RO/DI because I personally feel that it will be wasting water and the fish will have less mineral to absorb.

Now, this would also depend on where you live and the source of your tap water. For me personally, the water is moderately hard and that's good enough for my fishes. Off course, you can still use RO/DI water and get good growth in fishes if you have high quality food loaded with vitamins. But still, I find it wasteful to use RO/DI if you don't reuse the untreated water in the process. Not only that, at the rate that I change water, I think I'll need to have the whole house filled with RO/DI units to keep up, lol.

So, for me, a simple water conditioner is less costly overall than using RO/DI and I will get good growth from my fishes as well.

[cjdooley]

Hmmmm... Thats interesting. Me, I only use it because it's easier. I have a reverse osmosis drinking water tap right next to my main tap in the kitchen sink. I normally just fill up some water before hand, let it refill/re-filter more water, then fill up some more. Then, I have enough water to clean/water change and am not wasting any water in the process.

btw, I have a ten gallon FW tank

Thanks for the info! :shappy: