Rscomia
Aquarium Advice Addict
Can RO water have high posphates?
High posphates
- Thread starter Rscomia
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Fishguy2727
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Not if it is 0 TDS, which any TO water should be (or very close to it). If you are using filtered drinking water the purity is not nearly what it should be and can introduce phosphate among many things.
OP
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Rscomia
Aquarium Advice Addict
The reason for asking is I started both my sw tanks with water from the tap (I know this is not the best) I started using ro water from the culligan machine at wally world and started having red slime algae issues The last few water changes Ive done I switched back to tap water and it seems to be going away Do I need to find another ro source??
hackteck
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maybe the filters need to be changed where you get the ro water from thats totally possible
hackteck
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you could get a tds meter to test the water source their super cheap i got mine earlier paid 40 bucks for it my ro water is 2ppm from my tds it would be 0 but i dont have the di portion but thats good enough for me i use it for drinking water as well the source water is 230ppm
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Rscomia
Aquarium Advice Addict
Very true on the filters I never thought of that who knows how often wally world maintains them Where can I get a tds meter? Will a plumbing store have that?
hackteck
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oh i got mine at a lfs maybe you can call around
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Rscomia
Aquarium Advice Addict
K thanks for the info much help
hackteck
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no problem at all
Fishguy2727
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Red slime is usually involved when flow is too low. It can also be part of the progression of a new tank.
Either way you need to get a TDS meter because I can gaurantee you that drinking water is not 0 TDS, you are adding unwanted stuff into the tank with that water.
If you are going to buy water buy distilled, it wil be 0 TDS.
Either way you need to get a TDS meter because I can gaurantee you that drinking water is not 0 TDS, you are adding unwanted stuff into the tank with that water.
If you are going to buy water buy distilled, it wil be 0 TDS.
Phosphates come from two main sources. Food and tap water. Alot of your food esp. frozen and flake will add phosphates to your water. You should feed flake very sparringly and rinse your frozen food off before adding it to your tank. As a worker at a large water municipality I know that phosphates are added to treat tap to make it good for us humans. But not for our reef tanks.
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Rscomia
Aquarium Advice Addict
How low is to low of flow? In my 55 I have a 1300 gph wavemaker and a 300 gph filter and this is the tank it seems to be the worst in
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Rscomia
Aquarium Advice Addict
I have read that about flake food before I try only feeding it every other day and very little when I do Is this sparringly enough?
