HOW NECESSARY ARE THEY FOR INITIAL SETUP??? DO I NEED TO RUN MY WATER THROUGH 1 OR WILL A QUALITY SALT MIX BE GOOD ENOUGH...I PLAN ON USING LIVE SAND & ROCK TO START MY TANK...AGAIN 60 GAL....ANY THOUGHTS...

RO units are not things that you "run" water through, they actually hook into your water supply line and need a drain and a container to fill, you will be "shedding" anywhere from 4 to 1 up to 7 to 1 gallons - in other words for every gallon of RO filtered water you will throw 4-7 gallons down the drain as waste.................

that being said, salt mixes dont make up for not useing RO water in anyway what so ever..............you don"t "need" RO water but it sure eliminates a major group of headaches in a salt system {even in fresh water set ups} such as nitrate control, PH issues, silicas and other things that ALL lead to algae algae algae

I am getting ready to set up 2 RO units in my house and will be able to make 200 gallons a day {if i needed to} but for the last 2 years I have been buying my water at my local walmart - -they have a culligan dispenser and after you buy the 5 gallon jugs it's 37 cents a gallon to refill them..................just hauled 40 gallons home today as a matter of fact, i need to do a couple major water changes as ive been building a house for the last 5 months and useing tap water in the tank, and man i have paid for it with a huge hair algae outbreak..............time to get her back under controll

in a 60 gallon tank you could probably buy your water if its within traveling distance for a while until you can set up and RO - - another consideration is weather or not you own or rent your home, some landlords might not be real happy if you go modding the plumbing in their house ..................lol

good luck bud


Boss

amen fishboy................i have terrible sulfur water at my new house BUT have gotten the majority out of it with a filter system called an iron breaker - - -pretty cool piece of equipment............i still have to deal with the water not outgassing enough before use {in the house not the tanks} so another piece of equipment is need when the money comes its some sort of venturi injection system that forces O2 into the water pre filter then stores it to vent the outgassing and then it runs through the filter to the house - - My RO units will be after the house filters to save membranes as much as possable

the one good thing is that when my great grandfather had the well drilled in 1959 they lost the drill bit off the drill when they punched through the top of an under ground lake - - - -so while all my neighbors are running at 8-15 gallons per minute my well is capable of over 110 gpm {theycant test any higher so we really dnt know how fast it'll pump} so "wasteing" water isn't an issue for me

i have a 9ph and 2.0 hardness on the chart and a touch of silica which is going to be an issue, im hoping the RO filters will deal with it ????


lol my plumber said to get him the specs on the RO filters i want and said he could probably build something cheaper than i could buy - - - - -i showed him a 200 gallon per day unit on Foster and Smiths website - - - he laughed and said those are the units he buys and he can't touch their prices - - - so for everyone lookin at these things -- for once the hobby suppliers are beating the real world prices


Boss

as long as its RO your fine - - -this house used to have a culian system in it but it couldnt handle the sulfur it was like 120 a minth and lasted about 3 weeks efore the sulfur over powered it

the water i buy is from a culigan dispenser that is RO filtered