athena9995
New Member
We are setting up our first misting system and was wondering which water most people use.
Distilled or Reverse Osmosis?
- Thread starter athena9995
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lisagr07
Avid Member
reverse osmosis water
ghettomike
New Member
I use distilled. I'm not sure what the pros/cons if any to using either types but would be interested in knowing.
Monkeykungphu
New Member
Also, any thoughts on filtered water, say through a standard refridgerator filter?
I'd be interested too as I'm just using the R/O DI filter that I had from keeping reeftanks.
ghettomike
New Member
I think the problem with just filtered water is that there is still minerals/hardness in the water that will clog the heads eventually.
elrojo
New Member
Water is my thing! I'll generalize here between the two. R/O (reverse osmosis, which is essentially pressure separating particles from a solution)-D/I (de-ionization, ion exchange resins bind and filter out metals and mineral salts) filters make the purest water you can from your source (tap or well water). The source water goes through a series of filters, usually a sediment filter first, then ion exchange resins, and mechanical filters that nothing smaller than .5 microns can fit through. The resulting "R/O-D/I" water is usually very soft and low in pH, but this can be corrected (if needed) with mineral salts. The pros are, VERY pure water with 0 TDS, units are reasonably priced at around $200 for a 90 gallon per day unit. Cons are, lots of waste water down your drain, and slow to produce.
Distilled water is essentially steam collected and converted back to water. Some of it is copper distilled, which is deadly to inverts we keep in the aquarium or wish to view under a microscope. Distilled water is usually deemed worthless in aquarium and lab settings involving live specimens. Personally, I'd give my herps tap water before distilled. But I may be overly critical because of the thresholds of aquatic life to copper and other metals.
Distilled water is essentially steam collected and converted back to water. Some of it is copper distilled, which is deadly to inverts we keep in the aquarium or wish to view under a microscope. Distilled water is usually deemed worthless in aquarium and lab settings involving live specimens. Personally, I'd give my herps tap water before distilled. But I may be overly critical because of the thresholds of aquatic life to copper and other metals.
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athena9995
New Member
I know that distilled is a "hungry" water and not even good for a human female to drink because it will strip minerals from the person unless minerals are added beforehand. For that reason alone I was leaning toward RO. I don't want to spend a lot of time cleaning equipment because of calcium deposits from tap water. Thanks everyone for the input.
elrojo
New Member
I just talked to a chemist friend. He corrected me to a degree on my take on distilled water. While some is still copper distilled (not the pots, but the piping that cools and reverts it back to liquid), most commercially available distilled water is no longer made this way and the conductivity is equal to that of r/o-d/i. And Athena, r/o-d/i is as "hungry" as water comes! I'm uncertain about it stripping minerals from your body, since they will still be in your system for digestion. There may be something to that, but it doesn't seem scientifically sound. Ten minutes on the Google search engine showed tons of evidence to support either argument! Either way, our other purified option is near identical chemically. And adding mineral salts would not do our misting heads any favors.
