Berkey water filtration versus RO?

[sparkiesharkie]

Hello,

I’m coming to ask a maybe silly question but couldn’t find anything recent.


I have been topping off my 20gallon tank with water filtered from our Berkey home filter. My levels are fine and my corals are growing etc but it makes me wonder if it’s causing diatoms in my tank? It says it removes everything harmful but leaves minerals.

https://www.usaberkeyfilters.com/what-does-the-berkey-remove/
Our closest LFS is Petco and doesn’t have salt any longer, they are phasing it out but I don’t know if they sell Ro/Di water to begin with…

I did drive about 3 hours yesterday to a fancy fish store and had them test my water and the only thing they said was funky was my alk. I didn’t think to ask about the diatoms while there because well, short term memory and I didn’t put it on my list

This is what they read:

Salinity 1.026
Alk 350
P.h 7.9
Phos 0.4
Ca 555
Mag 1632
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 9



Do you think it could be the berkey and should I just invest in setting up our RO/DI unit? It would only be for the tank as all our drinking water comes from the berkey itself and I’d have to have to install something not needed… how would you recommend I lower the alk? I think the berkey may be part of that but am not sure and wasn’t sure if anyone else had the same problem… tank has been running for 6 months this way and I have adequate movement and a clean up crew, but diatoms keep coming back.

Thank you!

 

[Spare time]

An RODI should be way cheaper and it's guaranteed to work.

 

[lapin]

If it is a big concern you can test it yourself

https://www.hannainst.com/hi770-sil...erm=4582214710053978&utm_content=All Products