R/O-DI systems

[broomer5]

I make a batch of RO/DI water in a 20 gallon plastic container and let it run with a powerhead overnight before using it for top offs or saltmix.
Some do not aerate it at all.
I've tried mixing the salt both ways - and what I experienced has convinced me to aerate it.
Mixing the saltmix with the freshly purified RO/DI WITHOUT aerating it first overnight, gave me crappy test results on my saltbatch. Lower than "normal" levels of calcium, alkalinity and pH. I discussed this with a guy at Instant Ocean - and he recommended aerating it overnight if using RO/DI.
Has to do with the amount of CO2 gas in the freshwater supply, how the gas passes through the RO/DI unit, and must first be aerated when using it for saltmix.
Your results may be different from mine. Different freshwater supply.

 

[dubba-r]

Great post guys. Getting my RO/DI next week and learned a couple things here.

 

[drkegel]

RO/DI water is the most pure water you can get. It's even more pure than the bottled water you buy in stores in many cases. You can do your own testing to verify this.
I actually did some water testing for a dozen chemicals - copper, chlorine, chloramine, sodium chloride, to name a few. This was done in the chemistry lab at school as part of the first lab of the year for introductory chem. It was done to prove a point, that pure water does not conduct electricity. Sugar water doesn't conduct electricty either, FYI.
Anyway, pure water, at least to me, doesn't have any flavor. The "flavor" we associate with water is typically (this is somewhat subjective, due to differences in human tastebuds and how they respond to different stimuli) due to the additives or chemicals in the water you drink.
Drinking pure water will not dehydrate you.. In fact, ask any doctor, pure water is one of the best things for you. Salted water, which is impure, is one of the worst things for you to consume. Salt water will dehydrate you. Other contaminants in water have been linked to dehydration as well. (sugars, for example) When you get sick, pure water is one of the best ways to get healthy again, because illnesses typically dehydrate the body.
That said, too much water can be bad for you. Too much of practically anything can be bad for you, just like too little of certain things can also be bad for you. If you drink two gallons of water in 5 minutes, I'll pretty much guarantee you'll puke. If you don't drink any liquids, you'll probably be dehydrated to a certain degree.
I'm interested in seeing where some of the people on this board get their information, because I have yet to read anything from a documented source that says pure water is "bad" or "unhealthy" for a human to consume. All the information I've found is just the opposite, because bacteria and other organisms that live in water, don't actually live off the water, but off of the other chemicals found in the water.
I've been drinking the RO/DI water from my RO/DI system for about 6 months now, since the day I got it. I just had my annual physical, and I got a completely clean bill of health, same as I always do - even before I got my RO/Di unit.

 

[drkegel]

I'm not so sure that I completely follow all the logic in all these posts. See the last paragraph for what I'm getting at.
A few years ago, you could buy commercially a disc that you could put in your washing machine, a bucket, or whatever you wanted, and it would de-ionize the water. It was about $100 for it, and I've never heard/seen any research done on what it claimed to do.
And, I have a question to further this discussion, if the DI water I've been drinking needs to be stored in glass to keep it DI, what happens to DI water once it leaves the glass and hits my tongue? Wouldn't it then be ionized since glass is supposedly the only thing that keeps it in it's DI state? And if it's so "bad" then why am I still alive and with a clean bill of health?

 

[melbournefl]

http://www.pureh2o.co.uk/marsdonpager.html
seems to back up what Dr Kegel says.
I can't find anything on the net (admittedly short search) that says drinking either RO or DI or RO/DI is harmful.
Later,
Paul

 

[drkegel]

One of the reasons I love this (and other) message boards is they get me thinking, which usually leads me to do research/fact finding and ask questions.
So - I talked to a co-worker whose wife is a Bio-chemist that does cancer research at my school. They use all kinds of water, distilled, RO, RO/DI and it's some of the purest water in the world. It costs something like $75 a gallon, and all of it is safe for human consumption. Of course, they don't want you to drink it because it costs so flippin' much, but it's safe. And she can't think of any reason why it wouldn't be safe.
A couple more things that just don't add up the more I thought about this: if the water wasn't safe for you and I to drink, don't you think they would put some sort of large warning label on the package or somewhere so as to limit their liability? When you buy poisons (for mice) or any type of chemical it says in big bold letters "NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION" and goes into a spiel about steps to take if it were ingested. I couldn't find anything in the literature for my unit that says anything like that.
Also, why would we want to use water that is unsafe for us in our aquarium? Aren't the animals we keep ultra-sensitive in many cases to water quality? Even more sensitive than we are?

 

[broomer5]

For your review ...
1
2
3
4
Deionized water is a very strong solvent.

 

[frankl15207]

I'm not an expert and I have no scientific or medical background. The RO/DI unit that I purchased off of ---- is for reef use. They have a more expensive unit for use for drinking water. There has to be a difference and a reason that one unit is not for drinking and one is.
I have also read in more than one location not to use distilled water for topoff because of the ion exchange pointed out by Broomer. These are marine biologists, not hobbyists. They point out that the water may bond to the fish looking for ions.
And not to disagree with DrKegal, but distilled water is the purest form of water that you can buy. RO/DI water reaches 99.9% pure and the better RO/DI units advertise "almost as pure as distilled."
Back to the original topic: The 100 GPD unit being sold on ---- is a great unit. Today I made 50 gallons in 7 hours (that's far more than 100 gpd) and the TDS meter on the end product read 0.

 

[shadow678]

Ok then, I have a question for you. If DI water is such a powerful solvent, then how does it not dissolve the plastic tubing that carries it out of the unit? Or the plastic water jug I store it in? And if it HAS stripped ions from the tubing and water jug, how would it still be dangerous to me if i drink it, as it is no longer DI water? As far as the water being able to remove enough minerals from the body to be detrimental, that is absurd. With as much mineral as is taken in through food and beverages other than the water, much of the mineral content never gets processed, and is expelled from the body, unused. This is why so many people who do not drink ENOUGH water get kidney stones. I'll tell you what. I'll put this to a true scientific study. As soon as I am covered under insurance again, I will be going in for stomach ulcer treatment, which will include examination of the stomach lining with a scope.(In case you were wondering, my problems started LONG before I owned a DI system) I will continue to drink the DI water, and after a few months, will have my doctor perform the examination again, and we will see if there has been any permanent or even noticeable damage to my stomach lining. That will at least show whether or not DI water is affecting MY stomach.

 

[broomer5]

Type 1 pure water or DI water by definition is considered corrosive. That is why it is stored and transferred within laboratories in glass line pipe. This is to maintain it's purity, and to protect the piping. Otherwise it would become contaminated and no longer be useful for the reasons it was purified in the first place.
Plastic tubes, valves and plastic jug/containers are commonly used to carry and store corrosive materials.
The plastic is considered a better material for handling corrosive materials than many other pipe or container materials often used to transport and store liquids.
I believe that given enough time, even plastics will deteriorate under the constant exposure to a constant flow of many corrosive liquids - including DI water.
I did not mention anything about DI water removing minerals from the body. I mearly stated that DI water is an aggressive liquid not normally found in nature, and that it has the ability to strip ions from most anything it comes into contact with, including the digestive tract. I will add that in my opinion, a constant exposure to DI water as one's drinking water, may lead to other problems not yet identified.
If people want to, or choose to drink it - that's fine.
I will not argue with anyone that want's to drink DI water.
I will say this though. I've worked with industrial applications that use deionized water for over 20 years.
I've seen what DI water can do to piping systems, have measured it's conductivity/resistivity with analyzers, specified and selected valve/piping and instrumentation for handling this liquid and realize it's potential aggressive nature.
As far as your scientific experiement - go at it full speed ahead.
Have a discussion with your doctor regarding drinking DI water and see what he or she says.
Although with all the other aggessive/corrosive acids that are naturally produced in the stomach, and the presence of it's protective lining ( or lack thereof ), and the differences in one's diet, a true scientific study of the affects of DI water on the entire digestive tract would be difficult. I don't know if a cause and affect statement could be determined from such a study on just one individual, after just a few months. Too many other factors involved.
It's water - there's no debate that drinking pure water is a wonderful thing, and RO/DI water does make for a wonderful freshwater source to mix my saltmix. But DI water is not an option for me for my day to day drinking water needs.
I choose not to drink it - that's all.

 

[sal t. nutz]

Well, i am not a water expert, but I do know a bit about it and have to disagree. Sparkletts water in California, has been selling bottled water for many years and it is not only RO/DI water, they even use a 3rd purification called Ozonation. I'm pretty sure that if the DI water were harmful to humans, they wouldn't be allowed to sell the water. Not to mention that there would be tons of unhealthy people with digestive problems. When I lived there we used to have that water delivered weekly, adn I can say first hand that was the best water I have ever tasted. When I bought my RO/DI system, the people that manufacture it, sold it with a bypass, so I can drink the RO water, and flip a switch for the DI water for my aquarium. I asked why I couldn't just have it inline so that i could drink that water also. She told me that I could, that the water wouldn't harm me or anything, she explained the reason as being, the DI cartridge adds no taste quality to the water, stating that it would tase the same, but the cartridge only lasts for 700 gal, so that is why i should bypass it for drinking water. Just simply to save money.

 

[broomer5]

I don't doubt that this drinking water your refer to has been purified using RO and or DI technology.
If it tastes good - I would bet my last dollar that the company that makes it adds back into the purified water, calcium, magnesium, sodium and other minerals to make it taste the way it does.
DI water does not taste good to me - maybe others find it fine.
Treating water with RO or DI technology does not always mean that this is what you get in any store bought drinking water.
I'm talking about 99.9% Type 1 Laboratory Grade Deionized Water. The stuff that is possible to obtain out of a very good RO/DI unit or mixed resin bed system - that is used either in a laboratory, industrial applications or in our case - hobby use.
Not drinking water you buy off the shelf or get delivered to your house.
Treatment companies most always add back certain controlled levels of minerals, to most all of their bottled drinking water, that allow most people to find it good to the taste. Simply aerating it for a period of time, exposing it to carbon dioxide and other gasses, will move it from 99.9% pure DI water to another less pure form. I've done it before at work and measured the drift using conductivity probes/analyzers and known liquid Fischer Scientific conductivty standards.
We're all allowed to agree or disagree with the benefits or possible risks concerning drinking this stuff.
Do whatever you please.

 

[drkegel]

No question pure DI water is a strong solvent. No one is arguing that point. Regular water can even be considered a strong solvent, depending on what it comes in contact with.
Just because DI water damages piping does not mean it damages all other things. Regular fresh water corrodes many metals, and salt water is even worse in many cases.
If I were to follow that logic, the next step would be to say fresh water must be bad for me because look what it does to steel! Or vingear must be bad for me because look what happens when it reacts with baking soda! People use concentrated orange juice as a cleaning solvent, is it safe to consume that? Chlorine is one of the most toxic chemicals in the world in pure form, but municipal water is treated with trace amounts (among other chemicals that have been proven poisonous) to kill bacteria and add some nutritonal value - flourine is also added to many water supplies. How good any of that is for anyone hasn't really been proven either. There are literally hundreds of chemicals in the water by the time it reaches you, which is why we use purification systems in our hobby - to protect our costly investment.
My point is just because we can see a chemical reaction occur, as violent as it may look, it's not necessarily as bad as it looks. Certainly I don't want to ingest bleach or ammonia, but I feel pretty safe eating vinegars with my salad. And I love oranges, and I most assuredly love clean water.
To each his own, but I'll keep drinking the purest water I can get - from my RO/DI unit.

 

[broomer5]

Those are excellent points DrKegel
After further reading, and talking to my neighbor the chemist, I feel that drinking DI water may not be as harmful as I had once thought.
I read where many industrial and laboratory signs that say "DIONINZED WATER - DO NOT DRINK" are intended to keep people from drinking the DI water, not because of harmful affects of the water itself, but because the water is so pure, it contains no chlorine or other bacterial disinfectants - and therefore these large DI water *systems* could contain bacteria that could make people sick.
My chemist neighbor said he would not drink it, purely from the taste issue, but didn't think it would be too bad to drink. He said as soon as it hits your mouth - it's no longer deionized at such a pure state, and would not be considered harmful in his opinion.
Certainly not down deeper in your digestive tract, as I had mentioned before.
I still won't drink it - because personally I don't like the taste.
I still feel that it's somewhat aggressive, and choose not to drink it for that reason.
But I retract my earlier statements regarding it's potential health risks.
There seems to be a lot of contradicting information regarding this topic, much of it is without solid foundation. Some feel it's okay to drink DI water, while others don't. Sort of like other things we all talk about here.
Thanks for the discussion and your point of view. It certainly inspired me to dig deeper into this issue, read more, to consider your viewpoint, other folks experiences .... and I've learned a great deal.

 

[shadow678]

Broomer, you are a very respectable person. I have always really enjoyed your posts, as you seem to be a very educated person, and you never post something that isn't strongly supported. Thank you for guiding us all into a new learning experience. You are a master debater. (Careful now, I can hear your mind clicking on that) I'll be glad to see you reply to any posts of mine.

 

[drkegel]

Broomer - just wanted to say that your insight and knowledge of a variety of fields is always appreciated. I attribute much of the positive debate on this board to your approach.
I know I get carried away sometimes in my responses, but I try to contribute to the discussions in as positive a way as possible. The one thing that always sticks with me the most when talking science is: Correlation can never mean causation. That is the cardinal rule in science. The classic example: I have a headache. I take an aspirin; my headache goes away. This does not mean that a deficiency of aspirin caused my headache.
You, and people like you, are a major factor in why I decided to attempt to keep a reef tank in the first place. Without your knowledge and knowledge of many others on this board, I would have wasted a good amount of time and energy in futility.
No one in the world knows it all, no one ever will.

 

[broomer5]

Thank you Shadow678
Thank you DrKegel
I enjoy reading replys on many topics from both of you here as well.
Very informative, and like most folks .... we all learn as we go.
I also realize that many times we reply with a "shoot from the hip" approach.
Sometimes we feel we're making accurate statements .
Sometimes we find out we're not.
This was certainly a case of me not knowing all the facts before replying to what I thought was correct.
Sometimes we perpetuate false information, many times out of pure opinion or what we've heard - rarely from our own experiences or what we've seen first hand.
I stand corrected often. Corrected leads to learning. Learning makes this hobby much more enjoyable.

 

[buyitjody]

I know this is an old discussion, but after reading everything above, all I want to know is:
Is RO/DI water bad for my tank?
Why do most posts around here say it is best to us RO/DI water in your tank if it is so corrosive?
Can I use it as topoff water?
If not, how do people have tanks that have water directly pumped into their tank or sump through an RO/DI unit by using a float switch to turn it on and off?
I guess I'm a bit freaked out because I just bought an RO/DI unit.
Jody

 

[gatorcsm]

Well, this is a question/answer (question for broomer)
RO/DI is best for the reef tank because it is as close to pure water you can get (usually pure water is around <.1ppm TDS)
This is the question to broomer (if he ever gets back to this thread..)
With regards to it being corrosive... I've never heard of it being it being corrosive. We use DI water both produced ourselves, and from a purewater rig. This is most definitely DI. It is used for a nuclear reactor. We use stainless steel and flex hoses for transport of it. I've used it for many applications that involves metals such as copper and brass. We use it on motors to clean them out in conjunction with non-ionic soap. This keeps it from allowing corrosion. (according to tech-manuals and our chemical/radiological controls manual)
We have many redundant controls to ensure this water is DI before being used. It passes through as many as 3 mixed di resin beds before being used. We use almost all stainless steel piping, plastic containers, with no ill effects documented. And as far as I know, they have been doing so for decades.
Just curious where this info is coming from.
Thanks,
-Gator

 

[flamingkingofhe]

ro/di