So, I'm a doctoral/medical (MD-PhD program) student working in a biology lab, and thus have access to some interesting devices. Among these is a $12,000 water purification system known as the "Milli-Q IQ 7003". (Shoutout to the taxpayers for funding this nifty thing btw.) The basic point of it is to deliver ultra pure water. These things make RODI units look like Brita water filters. Not only do they create 0 TDS water, it's almost completely free of any ionic traces of any other element or compound, and they're designed to eliminate basically all microorganisms from the water as well. In our lab, we mostly use it to create sterile water for when we operate on our model organisms (which we mix with other ultra-pure compounds to create artificial cerebrospinal fluid). We need to do this because if you drop cells into pure Milliq water, they will violently die because the osmotic pressure inside will make them rapidly expand and explode.
Anyway, I'm going to use this water for water changes for a month and see what happens. I really doubt it will be much different, because at a certain point there are diminishing returns on the purity of the water. I.e. - going from 250 TDS (my actual tap water) to 1 is a huge improvement, but going from 1 to 0.0000000000001 is much less noticeable. Technically, the machine is supposed to get water to specifically 18.2 MΩ.cm (at 25°C) and a total organic carbon (TOC) value below 5 ppb. MΩ.cm stands for megohm-centimeter. It is is an important water quality test indicator for the concentration of anions and cations in water. The higher the ionic content - the lower the resistivity and the lower the ionic content - the higher the resistivity. This is really generalized, and I'm not a chemist, but those are the basics.
Anyway, I'll be doing a 5-gallon water change with this water once per week for 8 weeks to see if I notice any results. It starts today. I'll keep you guys updated!
Here's a representative photo (ours is larger though):
Anyway, I'm going to use this water for water changes for a month and see what happens. I really doubt it will be much different, because at a certain point there are diminishing returns on the purity of the water. I.e. - going from 250 TDS (my actual tap water) to 1 is a huge improvement, but going from 1 to 0.0000000000001 is much less noticeable. Technically, the machine is supposed to get water to specifically 18.2 MΩ.cm (at 25°C) and a total organic carbon (TOC) value below 5 ppb. MΩ.cm stands for megohm-centimeter. It is is an important water quality test indicator for the concentration of anions and cations in water. The higher the ionic content - the lower the resistivity and the lower the ionic content - the higher the resistivity. This is really generalized, and I'm not a chemist, but those are the basics.
Anyway, I'll be doing a 5-gallon water change with this water once per week for 8 weeks to see if I notice any results. It starts today. I'll keep you guys updated!
Here's a representative photo (ours is larger though):
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