RO water: Fad or neccesary evil?

[arcturus]

Of course energy use is another important factor, and perhaps partially why I keep my tanks and fish choices limited to species that prefer lower (19-24c) temperatures, but I started this thread more about the water waste than about carbon or energy waste. Living in a forest rich area surrounded by agriculture makes the effects of drought and the impact of water wasting very visible. For instance birch trees are slowly dying around here because their roots can't reach the water in the ground anymore for the last few summers. Oak and beech have deeper roots but even those are not doing great. Seeing this and going on vacation to France and Italy, and seeing large patches of dried out nature and seeing lakes and streams at lower then normal levels has in the past few years made me very conscious of my water use. Of course the lower levels of the streams is influenced by less snow in the alps and other mountains which is influenced by the carbon output and energy use, but yeah, my focus for the thread was about wasting water mostly and if people use ro water for breeding specific fish I don't have issues with it either.

Whether we like it or not, aquaristics has an overall negative environmental impact, starting from catching wild fish in their natural habitats to the water and energy consumption needed to operate a tank, especially a "high-tech" tank. The usage of RO water is certainly a negative factor but it needs to be put in perspective. 1Kg of meat uses 15.500 l of water. Unfortunately, using or not using RO water will barely make a dent in our overall ecological footprint, including on our <usage of water resources>.

But currently I see it being used as some sort of holy grail of succesful scaping, and I feel that for 2/3 of the people doing it is just because they see others do it. They are pouring money and water down the drain for very little actual benefit and its wasteful when we should be conservative with our water.

Well, the root issue is not RO, but the current concept of "high-tech" accelerated, social-media driven aquascaping. How many scapers are actually aiming to create stable ecosystems for a longer term? What we see today, is way too many people setting up high-tech tanks for a couple of months with the goal of taking a handful of fancy photos for social media, just to reset the tank and start again, with a brand new hardscape, substrate, etc.. RO is not what is causing a waste of resources...

If someone has tips on how to save on carbon and electricity use in regards to our hobby I am all ears btw!

- Buy livestock that is locally bred.

• Stop buying fancy rocks and pieces of wood that are sourced from the other side of the planet.
• Go low-tech.
• Make other changes in your lifestyle that will have a much larger impact on your eco footprint than aquaristics...

 

[Carol]

Having kept Discus in areas with hard water either a heavy metal axe unit or RO were really needed. Having also had Marines you had to use RO for top up. As you replenish nutrients in marines in other ways that was fine.
However if you use pure RO it has to be remineralised as its basically water with nothing in it🙄. We for the Discus used half tap and half RO.
Depends I guess on what your tap water is like.