Is this ok to use for my tank?

[Myvirtue]

My wife bought this for our house and the company told me it would be great for saltwater tanks aswell. but i wanted to see what you guys thought about it. Im currently looking for a ro/di unit but i wanted to double check first. they told me this was a upgraded model from the standard reverse osmosis system they put under ur sink. its really big and its in my garage.

http://www.revolutio...ducts/extraPURE

Edited August 24, 2010 by Myvirtue

[offroadodge]

i have there whole house water filter system, works good for drinking water and the house, u will still need an RO/DI unit to make water for the tank. This is what mine looks like

[Myvirtue]

lol i got the same thing. where do u buy your salt at? trying to avoid paying there prices. i also called about them installing the actual ro system but they wanna charge me 650$ installed. so i guess i need to buy one then. arghhh im sure its cheaper than that . i guess i misunderstood them. said that the only difference between ro and the what i have is TDS?

Edited August 24, 2010 by Myvirtue

[NonSequitur]

The unit you have looks like an ion exchange softener (a rather fancy one, by the look of it). This removes calcium and magnesium ions and replaces them with sodium ions. The activated carbon section of the unit will initially remove chlorine/chloramines as well, but I can't understand in this setup how they keep it from getting exhausted, so that ability will likely decrease at some point unless the carbon is periodically replaced.

Water from this system will be great to drink, bathe, wash clothes in, but the system does not remove nitrogen and phosphorus compounds that can cause nuisance algae outbreaks, as well as chlorine/chloramines which can be very harmful to aquatic life.

$650 is overpriced for an RO system, Bulk Reef Supply sells a 5 stage 75 GPD RO/DI system with the appropriate bits to also use as a drinking water system for $220:

http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/store/75-gpd-ro-di-5-stage-drinking-water-system.html

I'm sure they have a very polished answer for why their RO is better than all of the others, but it really isn't: I learned this the hard way.. I've yet to find a test that my $150 GE unit doesn't perform just as well on as my $1000 kinetico unit, and the same is true of the BRS systems. (Do I sound bitter? I am.. if I had known that their unit really wasn't any better I would have gone with BRS, Buckeye Field Supply, etc and saved the extra money, but I fell for the hype.)

[NonSequitur]

lol i got the same thing. where do u buy your salt at? trying to avoid paying there prices.

HEB sells Morton's salt which works just fine in any softener.

[medi]

I have the exact same setup. Just so you know this is not a Salt system. You are supposed to only run Potassium in it. Salt is only run in water softeners. This is supposedly not a softener, but a purification system, whatevery that means. That is the reason the bags from revolution water are so dang expensive. The best price I have found is Wal-Mart, and I believe they charge $14/bag.

[NonSequitur]

It's the same thing, really. They call it a purification system instead of a softener because it combines sediment filtration (garnet bottom layer) with ion exchange softening ("removes more iron and hardness causing minerals" from their website) and chemical filtration (activated carbon)... well, that and they want to differentiate it from run of the mill "softening" systems out there that cost far less. Another interesting bit is their cleaning process.. running low current through the titanium plates to create a "special cleaning solution" is the exact same process that swimming pool chlorine generators use: salt (or potassium) water is split electrolytically into hydrogen, oxygen, and chlorine, which promptly forms hypochlorous acid (HClO), which is a very effective sanitizer. This is a really cool idea that more companies should look into, waterborne pathogens are no fun, but it's something to be aware of. I'm not sure how much of the chlorine and it's byproducts get through the carbon filter, probably not a lot.

KCl does the same job as NaCl in a traditional system, it just adds potassium to the water instead of sodium so it's slightly better for people on restricted sodium diets.

Why am I harping on this? There's so much hype and misinformation in the water purification industry that people need facts to make real comparisons. Is this system better than a home improvement store system? Almost certainly! Is it 6x better (based on the $3000 I paid 6 years ago for my kinetico system (their direct competitor) vs the $400 I paid 3 years ago for my GE system)? That's up to you, but it's hard to really know for sure because they surround the facts with layer upon layer of jargon and obfuscation.

[NonSequitur]

I should add: NaCl and KCl are not directly interchangable in a system, so don't take my last post as a suggestion to run salt in a potassium system of you risk poor performance and possibly voiding the unit warranty.