Initial tank fill up

[AZdogpatch06]

So I have an interesting situation. I have a twenty five gallon tank that's been set up since the end of June, call it six weeks. I just noticed it has a chip in the glass, presumably there from the beginning. This means a complete tank tear down, replacing it at the fish store and everyone gets to spend the night in my old ten gallon tank, wahoo! I actually just got an rodi unit from bulk reef supply. Like a lot of people, I didn't realize how bad the pure to waste water ratio is: 4 gallons of waste for every one gallon of good water. By my math, I'd literally throw away 100 gallons of water and I don't want to do that, especially living in Arizona where water is precious. I plan on using my rodi for water changes and top off, but what can I use to initially fill it? Possibly distilled water from wally world? (Walmart) I'd rather shell out $20 for water than waste a hundred gallons of it. I'm not a tree higher by any means, but that's a ton of waste! There's an lfs across town that sells rodi, but I don't have any containers so that's basically out of the question.

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[Sniperhank]

I run my reef tank off of distilled water now that my ro/di is down. I have algae growth off of it and it takes a lot of additional maintenance.
If you are concerned about the waste water, then collect and use it! Many of us use it in the washing machine, watering the plants, for the dog to drink...some creativity in what it is you do daily will get a use out of it.

 

[AZdogpatch06]

It was actually cheaper to initially fill it up with Walmart pre-bottled "drinking water". The label says filtered by reverse osmosis. It's not DI but I figured it's pretty darn clean and certainly better than tap water. Will use rodi system for top offs and water changes.

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[Grizz]

You can reduce waste water by adding another RO membrane to your RO/DI system I had to add a booster pump to mine (To bring pressure to 65 psi.) but i have lowered my waste out put by 75% My 150 gl per day now gives a 1to1 waste to filtered water. There's a video on how to add a 2nd membrane on BRS