ro vs tap

[panboy]

what is the difference vs RO water and TAP.

i've used tap water always, and since im in Arizona, its very hard, and high ph about 8, but with my co2, it averages about 7.4

anyways, i was wondering what ro has over tap water, and if one is better than the other, thanks

 

[CFC]

R/O water is 100% pure and contains no minerals or contaminants, so pure in fact that you have to add some minerals back to it before it is safe to use for fish.
Being so pure it makes a excellent base which can very easily be adjusted to suit your particular needs by varying the ammounts of minerals and buffers you add back to the water, if you want soft acidic water for Amazonian fish like discus then you need only add a small ammount of bicarbonate of soda as a buffer and soak some filter peat in the water prior to use and you will have the closest thing to actually going to the Amzon and collecting the water from there. Vice versa if you want hard alkeline water for marine fish or rift valley Cichlids then you simply add more bicarbonate of soda and the appropriate trace elements (bought from a LFS) to recreate the water from their natural enviroment.

 

[DannyBoy17]

If you put R/O water in the microwave, and then drop sugar, or some type of mineral/additive, the water will "explode". Tap water doesnt do this because it boils. When you add a mineral to R/O water, it causes it to "boil" like tap water (bubbling) but with much more force.

DB

 

[breezer40]

If you put R/O water in the microwave, and then drop sugar, or some type of mineral/additive, the water will "explode".

Did you actually try this? I feel an experiement coming on

 

[DannyBoy17]

If you put R/O water in the microwave, and then drop sugar, or some type of mineral/additive, the water will "explode".

Did you actually try this? I feel an experiement coming on

Mythbusters baby!

I learn everything useful from that show...#### school.

Some of the myths are cool though, and you dont want them to prove it right or wrong...oh well.

DB

 

[Bignose]

I hate to get too off topic, but DB is only giving half the story:

Everyone knows that water boils at 100 deg C right? Well, sort of. Under careful conditions, you can get liquid water to get above 100 -- and put it in a so called meta-stable state. This meta-stable state can be dangerous, as, like DB said, a perturbation or disturbance can cause all the liquid water to become vapor instantaneously -- it is over 100 after all!

Imagine a boulder perfectly balanced on the tip of a mountain. If completely undisturbed, the boulder will not go anywhere. But, if you push it slightly to one side, it will obviously fall over. On the tip, the boulder could be considered to be in a meta-stable state; stable if undisturbed, but one little perturbation and the system changes rapidly.

Water will only get to this meta-stable state is there is no nucleation point for boiling to occur. Next time you boil water for noodles, look at the metal pan, and at the begining, you should notice a stream of bubbles coming up from one point in your pan. This point is a small imperfection, possibly on the atomic scale, where the transiiton from liquid to vapor can take place. Now, obviously you can't put the metal pan in the microwave, so you use something like a pyrex measuring cup made of glass. The glass can be made very smoothly, specifically, without the imperfections that allow nucleation. So, you can possibly heat your water above 100. Dateline (TV news program in the U.S.) had a report a few summers back of people who burnt themselves quite severely by heating water in the microwave too hot. In this case, it was the jarring of the cup when it hit the counter that caused the metastable water to flash.

RO water has a slightly better chance to become metastable, as tap water may contain solids or particulate matter in it that can act as a nucleation site. But, filtered tap water can be just as dangerous as RO water. The act of adding the minerals in DB's case is a perturbation of the system that will cause it to flash. Adding anything or disturbing metastable tap water is just the same as RO water.

So, next time you heat water up in the microwave in a glass container, consider putting a plastic spoon in there just to be on the safe side.

 

[DannyBoy17]

Wow....thanks buddy, I was just giving a little fun fact. I didnt know you guys were expecting an all out essay. My back hurts too much to complain though, or make sense. I got burned because of that damn water explosion...grrr *mutters something stupid to self*.

DB

 

[panboy]

lol, i love what my topic turned into.

thanks for the info.

 

[OohFeeshy]

Cool. Does it act like normal water if you boil it in a vacuum? I mean, with normal water you can boil it at about 30 degrees.

 

[desley]

If you wanted to use RO water for tropicals like danios, platties what would you have to add to it to make it good for them.

It seems a shame I have RO water in the kitchen (nice & pure) and I give them the brownish crappy water that comes out of our taps.

I haven't used the RO water before because someone said you had to add extra minerals etc and I thought it was out of my league.

I only use it sometimes if I am adding some salt (a few cups etc).

 

[Dorkhedeos]

well, if you dont mind the cost of it, i guess its the best water you can get