well water

[gingerjenny]

So, do I need to take any special considerations if I have well water for a salt water tank. Can I just do the reverse osmosis and add salt?

[Aquarist007]

If you are going to filter it then no worries.

[boxfishpooalot]

Sometimes reverse osmosis water can still be high in phosphate. I'd make sure that the final stage has deionization. That will purify it. But yes you can use ro/di no just ro.

[Aquarist007]

Originally Posted by boxfishpooalot

Sometimes reverse osmosis water can still be high in phosphate. I'd make sure that the final stage has deionization. That will purify it. But yes you can use ro/di no just ro.

Good point I was assuming that it was ro/di

[Silly clownfish]

You don't need to have a prefilter that removes chlorine if you have a well. I recommend that you get a TDS meter if you don't have one so you know what is coming out of your well. That way you have an idea of whether your need DI or just RO.

Now as a water resources engineer:
I personally test my tap water occassionally for all of the parameters that I have a test kit for as a check of the chemical stability of my well water. Droughts or high water table periods can change the quality of your well water or even possibly introduce contaminants. I get a county test for coliforms once a year or so and have had full chemical panels a couple of times. Better safe than sorry, since no one else is looking out for you on the quality of your water.

[murdock84]

Originally Posted by gingerjenny

So, do I need to take any special considerations if I have well water for a salt water tank. Can I just do the reverse osmosis and add salt?

Look for the post that are about people burning through DI filters. A lot seem to be on well water. It appears that CO2 is common in wells and that will burn up DI filters. I have a well and have hard water, high CO2 and lots of sediment. My plan after being advised is to run a few different sized sediment filters, then the water softener, then to my RO stage into a trash can with an air stone for 24 hrs. then pump that through the DI filters into my RO/DI storage container.

As stated earlier, you'll want to get a TDS meter. I'm still gathering my equipment and will be buying one.

[Windyman55]

Interesting to hear that people are using R/O on a well. I have well and County water. Before I bought my 7 stage R/O I contacted seven different people selling these things and 5 of the seven said on it would be best to connect to the county water. The reasoning was the county water would always have a constant pressure at it would always be high at 60 lbs of pressure. That the system would work no where as efficient since the pressures on a well can fluctuate as much as 25 pounds. If you folks using yore R/O on a well tell me your not having any issues I my move mine over to the well. My TDS meter says I have 122ppm contaminates on the county water. But only 4 on my well water. I could cut down my filter changes to next to nothing.

[Sapelo]

I use a RO/DI system on a well and have never really had a problem with getting enough pressure to produce 75 gallons per day. Does it fluctuate? Not enough to be noticeable to me. I also live on a farm and between the animals drinking water and the irrigation we run, I suspect we keep the well running pretty consistently. We do have another lower flow well on the farm that needs to have two lines running at once to keep the pump from shutting off and on all of the time.
I did start my saltwater life without running RO/DI and I can tell you that the number of problems in my tank have plummeted since the switch.

[shesacharmer]

I just got a RO/DI system with my well...it took me 9 hours to make 14 gallons of water. I got a booster pump and now I can make 14 gallons of water in 4 hours with 0 TDS.

[gone fishin]

I have run my RO/DI off my well for years. I do use a booster pump to get the pressure up to 70psi. I do not have issues burning through the DI as some have mentioned.