When keeping sensitive species such as corals or soft water species such as Discus fish its advisable to use Reverse Osmosis water (RO). The Reverse Osmosis units remove any additives and sediments such as chlorine’s, heavy metals, calcium etc from your tap water to produce a pure soft water. This is especially important in Hertfordshire because our water is high in pH and human water fit for consumption is not ideal for fish-keeping. At maltbyaquatics we can advise and install RO units to meet your requirements.

A customer in Harpenden needed an RO unit installed so that they could provide pure water for their coral reef aquarium. The RO unit was to be linked up to a reservoir which would automatically top up when needed, this meant we needed to install an auto shut off kit to this unit which would stop the unit producing water when the reservoir was full. This simple diaphragm based bit of kit automatically changes the water from the production stage to the waste stage. The RO unit was a 4 stage system which consists of the standard RO membrane stage, a pre-filter to remove sediments and a carbon block to remove heavy metals and chlorine’s. The last 4th stage is an extra known as the de-ionising stage, this makes the water ultra pure by removing 99.9% of the total dissolved solids (TDS) that are undesirable for reef aquariums. A TDS meter was installed to give an indication of when the resin or cartridges require changing, usually every 6 months with normal usage.

This unit produces 50 gallons a day more than enough to compensate for evaporation and a weekly water change!