Silicate removal+ RO water help

[SaltyB24]

When I started in the hobby we purchased a RODI unit but because we have well water we burn through DI resin at a rate of 15ish gallons per cartridge making the RODI unit unaffordable to use with our 125 gallon tank. In place, I go into town to our water mill and purchase RO water and have been using that. This has worked great for several years but over the last few months we started seeing issues with high silicates and experiencing issues with chrysophytes (ID’ed with a microscope) when I ramped up my lights after adding corals.

I live in a fairly remote area with the closest LFS being 2 hours away. My schedule does not allow a 4 hour round trip to go pick up water so I need to find a solution to work with what I have.

My thoughts are to add the RO water to a brute trash can and run some phosphate and silicate remover to remove the excess silicates. Has anyone done this? Scratching my head at how I can make this work. These chrysophytes are trying to smother my corals and are very ugly to look at.

 

[tzabor10]

Maybe soften your whole home water then RODI that

 

[KStatefan]

Degas your RO water then pump thru Di

 

[Lavey29]

Get a spectrepure silicate buster DI filter for your RODI system. Keeps my silicates at 0.

 

[Anxur]

Some dinoflagellates eat diatoms.. The more diatoms there are (gazelles) the more dinoflagellates there will be (lions)

If the Silicate level increases (grass) there will be more diatoms (gazelles) and consequently more Dinos (lions)

I can bet 1 million dollars that 70% of the dinoflagellate problems come from the RO water..

Remember.. From my personal experience.. 000 microsiemens out of the RO.. With 2 mg/liter of silicates.. Change the post membrane resins often..

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I disagree on the silicate dino connection.

 

[Anxur]

Non sono d'accordo sul collegamento tra silicato e dinosauri.

Exactly.. Silicates and dinoflagellates do not have a direct correlation, but rather an indirect one..

Dosing silicates voluntarily or involuntarily in the tank will cause an increase in diatoms...

However, if we have the strain of dinoflagellate that feeds on diatoms, then we will also have the evident appearance of that type of dinoflagellate.

I disagree on the silicate dino connection.