RO system help

[trainride72]

Hello~
We are looking for a littl assistance in purchasing the correct RO system. We have a 14 gallon Bio-cube reef tank that we had been having some trouble with. We received some good advice and were told that we should really look at using RO water for out water changes and that we should be doing water changes 1/week until we got out tank back to the correct levels.
We have been doing some research on different RO systems. We found one place that sells a home system and an aquarium system. The question that we have is if we were to purchase the home system that has a 5 stage would it be safe to use for the aquarium? Or if we purchased the 7 stage aquarium system would it be safe to use as drinking water as well?
If you could give us some insight on this it would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you in advance.

 

[florida joe]

In theory the more stages you have to purer water you produce. But there is a point of diminishing returns. The main difference IMO between a home setup and one for aquariums is the fact that the home systems tend to have a small holding tank. This tank is pressurized and produces water for your tap. They tend to be slow operating and you have to draw the water from your tap. An aquarium model attaches to any water outlet you have in or outside the home and you can produce water at a faster rate

 

[bang guy]

The 5 stage will be fine to use for both drinking and aquarium. The typical home system does not have a Deionize stage. Althought this stage isn't required for aquariums, it dies remove the leftover Nitrates and Phosphates that can leak through the RO filter. I recommend buying a TDS meter with your filter if it doesn't come with one so you know how well it's working.
A DI stage is easy to add at a later date if you find that the RO isn't enough.