Reverse Osmosis

ChrissyBoy · Jan 25, 2011

So I've got really hard water in my area and I'm sure this is affecting my plants as they keep dying. I did post a thread on here about this but didn't get much of a reply. So I went down to my LFS for some advice, turns out; they're not too knowledgable about anything at all!

I asked them how to lower the GH of my water, the fella immediately said reverse osmosis. Before this, I'd never heard of reverse osmosis and asked how; he didn't have a clue how to do this. Therefore, I took to the internet and found RO systems which were around £80.

So, to the questions; is it really worth implementing this and will it have any affect on the health of my plants and my fish?

My fish don't seem to mind the hard water!

saltynay · Jan 25, 2011

To name the ones that spring to mind:
Using pure rain water
Boiling water before use
Percolation through peat before introduction to the tank
Buy bottled soft water
Flow through Ion exchange resin membrane

If memory serves RO water is water devoid of chemicals but it is very inefficient process to make RO water and cannot be used alone otherwise the lack of minerals seriously harms aquatic life. RO water is mainly used by Marine keepers as it allows them to have exact control over the chemistry of their tank

ChrissyBoy · Jan 25, 2011

Thanks for the reply Saltynay!

So can I just buy a few of those massive bottles of mineral water and use that instead of mains water for water changes? Would that lower the GH of my water whilst keeping all the needed minerals in the water?

elisew · Jan 25, 2011

ChrissyBoy said:
So I've got really hard water in my area and I'm sure this is affecting my plants as they keep dying. I did post a thread on here about this but didn't get much of a reply. So I went down to my LFS for some advice, turns out; they're not too knowledgable about anything at all!

I asked them how to lower the GH of my water, the fella immediately said reverse osmosis. Before this, I'd never heard of reverse osmosis and asked how; he didn't have a clue how to do this. Therefore, I took to the internet and found RO systems which were around £80.

So, to the questions; is it really worth implementing this and will it have any affect on the health of my plants and my fish?

My fish don't seem to mind the hard water!

I think I replied to your previous post.

I was using a mix of RO water and tap water because as saltnay says RO isn`t good on it`s own, mixing it with tap water puts some of the levels back in that your fish do need. RO is generally used if you have fish that require softer water hence the need to know what fish you have?

It can be expensive to run an RO system as you can end up with a lot of waste water to only a small amount that can be used, so it`s more a case of 'Do you really need it'? :unsure:

saltynay · Jan 25, 2011

You will need to read the label on the bottle to tell some times bottled water has high hardness sadly there is no general rule.

moochy13 · Jan 25, 2011

my friend has been looking into this, and was given a demonstration of a 'cheap' unit, about 80 quid i think. the amount of water you can use compared to the waste is not very much, and the flow of the RO water coming from the pump is painfully slow. i think he worked out that half his 130G tank would take 24 hours to fill :blink: