ro units

Hi new to reef keeping, at the moment I collect ro water from my lfs , I would like an ro unit but have little room and a wife who is not keen on having it set up perm. I have been told they must be kept running constantly , yet I see on ebay units for sale, good prices and say can they be run intermittently. how do you go about storage when not in use and does it damage them to use like this? thanks Paul, Beds UK

I keep mine in the garage and only set it up when I need it- typically once a week or so unless I am doing a lot of water changes for some reason.

I know of no models that have to be run continuously. You can buy a five gallon (unsed, of course) plastic gasoline can and fill it up for use as needed. Just be sure to mark it NOT to be used for any other purpose.

You do not need to have the unit run continously. It will be costly for your water bill and replacement media. You can use a five gallon bottlle to storage your water with a lid close. Five gallon jug bottle can be purchase almost anywhere like Walmart / KMart / Target or any local water purfication shop.

With RO unit, you should thinking about a TDS meter for investment to check your RO performance if you do not own one yet.

I wasn't too sure myself but I bought a 100gpd unit. a saddle valve clips onto a water pipe and the unit is mounted onto the wall so it's well out of the way. I bought an auto-shutoff unit so the pressure's on all the time. its mounted inside a 30 Gallon water butt and so only runs when the level drops. the only other thing is it needs a waste pipe to connect to. this means I have 30Gallons of RO water any time that I need it. a bit of fine tuning on set-up with the pipe connectors needing tightening and that was all the hassle, except for paying for it.

Robin

the RO unit is mounted on the wall above the tank (£15 from B&Q if I remember) and there's a small ball-cock device (like in your toilet only a lot smaller) drilled and mounted inside the tank itself. my TDS readings were over 210 but after this came down to 8ppm. I know that its not as pure as some would like but its a hell of a lot better than if I didn't have the unit. sorry I would have included a photo attachment but these NG folk don't seem to like that sort of thing.