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Thread: Pure Ro

  1. #1
    Wrigglers
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    May 2005
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    Toowoomba
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    Pure Ro

    It depends on just how good your Ro unit is I guess. Different RO membranes take out varying solutes. A good membrane will reduce the water to almost distilled water content, but will never truly remove all solutes. You can use Pure RO on discus - and discus only (plus cardinal tetras etc), but I would strongly recommend the addition of a solute/electrolyte replacement of some kind. We use a SEACHEM brand discus salts/solutes. Works really well with RO water supply.
    To say that pure RO works on fishes is not true. To start with, you have an organism that exchanges electroytes through the gills. Its whole life depends on being able to stop salt/solutes from escaping from its body. Discus are about the best at doing this in a pure environment.

    Pure (and really good RO) water should be similar to distilled water. The fish spend too much energy forcefully trying to exchange osmotic imbalances in that kind of water. I would like to look at your fishes gills under a microscope, because I believe gill damage would be occurring under pure RO water. They would be working overtime!!

    Heckel discus live in a 'soup' in the wild that is very high in Humic acid content. This is from surface soil/humus run-off. The pH is low because of this. The total dissolved solute content is not low however. This is exactly what RO water removes.

    Do an internet search and see just how 'toxic' RO water is without the addition of relative solutes is. Another journal you can visit is -journal of aquatic animal health. The proof is out there - Pure RO will kill

    Squid

    PS. I can find info on this subject if anyone is wanting it
    Wild discus only please. Or bring back the old strains from the 80's.

  2. #2
    Medium Discus
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    Nov 2005
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    london
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    yes please on the info

    any chnace of an accurate breakdown of the dissolved mineral content of native waters

    andrew

    ps i use straight r/o with peat to acidify for many of my apsito species

  3. #3
    Wrigglers
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    May 2005
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    Toowoomba
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    251

    RO

    Andrew - I'm out of town until mid Jun. I'll try and find some info on gill changes in RO for you when I return

    Squid
    Wild discus only please. Or bring back the old strains from the 80's.

  4. #4
    Medium Discus
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    london
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    736
    bump
    what happened with those references


    i totally agree that pure water, with absolutely nothing dissolved in it is not appropriate for fish
    and i also very much doubt that any fish tank could be like that no matter how hard we tried to achieve it

    r/o units are maybe 95-98% effective when working at their optimum... so there is always something left in the water
    natural acids like humins and tannins etc are dissolved particles and must have some osmotic effect

    black water habitats of apistogramma are recorded as < 12us/cm for conducitivty, calcium and magnesiun levels < 1mg/l and pH 4 to 5

    other habitats are suggested as having conductivity upto 800 us , unfortunately i cant find any specifics on total dissolved solids

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