Prompted me to read further
. I had no idea the activated carbon surface is a catalyst rather than absorbing the chloramine. I also didn't know the ammonia passed through the membrane. Now understand why the reefers use their DI pods.Yes there are many many stories where people have switched to using RO water (especially cheaper units), from using dechlorinated water their reasons are "cos the waters purer", "cos don't need to bother dechlorinating any more", "etc etc" and have killed all their fish after a short while. This has been traced to high ammonia (and sometimes free chlorine) in their tank, which being the Internet generates loads of irrelevant waffle about RO water pulling ammonia out of substrates, makes dead fish rot quicker etc etc where as in fact the ammonia (and chlorine) came in via the RO water and poor RO unit.
If you are worried you should be using something like AmQuel+ which removes ammonia, most dechlorinators do not remove ammonia, as it is generally ammonia (from broken down chloramine) that can be present in the RO water. Generally I think you can trust a TDS meter, should be zero if all is working well.
) and he just date labelled his carbon pre-filters and DI resin, changed when date was due and occasionally tested the stored RO water for chlorine and ammonia as these were the most likely contaminants. And yes he had had test failures, fitted a new RO membrane once, tested water and tested positive for chlorine and nitrate and had high TDS, basically the RO membrane was faulty out of the packet. If he had supplied RO water in that state it would have killed marine fish and produce algae blooms. I think you can DIY recharge the final ion exchange resin by soaking it in salt solution, though debatable if worth it.
Seachem Prime is IMO a good water conditioner that ensures removing chloramines (may sound strange but other conditioners do not mention this specifically). The other good thing is its price, which is very good due to the very small amount of product needed.
