Experiences with Kent R/O Right salts?

[perle]

Hey all,

I have an R/O system (20G, cycling about 30% per day) and plan to add Kent R/O Right, a hardness additive, to make up for the complete lack of minerals in the RO water. Does anyone have experience with this?

Right now I am making several assumptions and they are probably wrong:

1. Very soft water will be best for my community tank. This is mainly based on my bad experiences with very hard water. Also I don't want to spend a fortune on R/O Right. Also, it is better to have a consistent water quality than a particular water quality.

2. The directions on the R/O Right bottle are crap. (Manufacturers usually tell you to add way too much, too frequently).

3. Some other people report success with 1/2 tsp per 10 gallons.

4. Because of the diffusion of the filtered water, cycling 10 gallons of water does not cycle 10 gallons worth of previously added R/O Right; instead, it cycles something less.

5. Good measurements of hardness are difficult to get (any tips? I am out of my league here).

I barely understand kGH/ppm and all of that so any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

~perle

[malkore]

I'll comment on 1, since I have zero experience with re-mineralizing RO water.

depends on the fish. 90% of fish don't care if the water is hard or the pH a little high...as long as its consistent.
for example, tetra are always listed as softwater, pH around 6.8. However I have relatively hard water with 14dGH and 10dKH, and a pH of 7.8. My tetra are fine...rather hardy in fact.

So, depending on how hard your tap water actually is, and the fish being kept, you may not really need RO water, or you may not need to use a ton of RO. If you mixed half RO and half tap water (dechlor'd of course) you'd cut hardness levels in half, and wouldn't need any RO Right.

[shawmutt]

I use ro water for both my tanks. The soft acid water gets a bit of Electroright, and the hard alkaline water gets a recipe I found here.