I'm tired of lugging water from WalMart/LFS to my house, so it's time to pull the triger on an RO/DI unit.
I've been researching/reading about them for the past month, and really started looking more in depth over the past week. I have a few questions I hope some of you more experienced aquarist can help me with.
In my lookings I am running across many different options. 3 stage, 4 stage, all the way upto 6 stages. I know I want the DI option but what do all these stages mean and do I need something with all 6 stages?
To me it would seem the more stages, the more pure water you get, but at the cost of replacing more filters/membranes more often. So manufactures state you should replace the filters every 6 months, other state 12 months.
So whats the deal with stages and filter replacement? Will a 4 stage make my water "clean" enough for my tank or do I really need to consider more stages.
And let's talk brand names for a moment as well. What makes say the Kent worth $250 compared to say the Coralife for $150 or the eBay deals for $100? As I understand it, it's all about the filters/membranes used and all seem to run just about the same type. And I've also heard the same manufacture produces the untils for Kent, Seachem, Coralife, etc. Any truth to this?
Sorry for the long post... just want to get a better idea of what people here think before I make this purchase.
Thanks in advance!
I've been researching/reading about them for the past month, and really started looking more in depth over the past week. I have a few questions I hope some of you more experienced aquarist can help me with.
In my lookings I am running across many different options. 3 stage, 4 stage, all the way upto 6 stages. I know I want the DI option but what do all these stages mean and do I need something with all 6 stages?
To me it would seem the more stages, the more pure water you get, but at the cost of replacing more filters/membranes more often. So manufactures state you should replace the filters every 6 months, other state 12 months.
So whats the deal with stages and filter replacement? Will a 4 stage make my water "clean" enough for my tank or do I really need to consider more stages.
And let's talk brand names for a moment as well. What makes say the Kent worth $250 compared to say the Coralife for $150 or the eBay deals for $100? As I understand it, it's all about the filters/membranes used and all seem to run just about the same type. And I've also heard the same manufacture produces the untils for Kent, Seachem, Coralife, etc. Any truth to this?
Sorry for the long post... just want to get a better idea of what people here think before I make this purchase.
Thanks in advance!