Reverse osmosis system, wich is the best? (and economic too)

Hello guys, hope that all are good wherever you are. I'm going to be short telling you what happened, just a few minutes ago. I have little experience growing marihuana, just a few plants in the past two summer, now that I wanted to start with my first indoor I thought that the best for me will be an hydro, so I've bought some things, what matters is that I got my EC/PH Meter and I just use it to know the ec and ph of my water...... the surprise was that I have an EC of 1.9 !!!! , Ph is 8.3 but I don't care since as we know there are many products to down it.
I never thought that my water will contain so many minerals... I'm pretty sad you know, because it wasn't on my plans.

Now as far as I know there are 2 solutions:
Buy thousand of gallons of distilled water
or
Buy a reverse osmosis system... and that seems to be the most realiable solution. BUT I don't have any idea about, don't know the brands, don't know how many stages it must have , I don't know nothing about , simply as that. I'm still in a little shock, I was pretty happy thinking in my future hydro I save my money for it and now this.

Please if someone could led me trought it I'll be thankful. I Live in Chile, so I think I'll have to buy the system by internet.

Regards
Yours Linda María.


PS: sorry if I made any grammar mistake.

I found a really good site that sells ro/di systems for under $300. The one I bought is 7stage and came w/ 6 replacement filters. First 3 stages are 1-5 micron sediment pre filter, 5 micron carbon, 1 micron carbon. Then the ro cartridge and finally 3 separate de-ionizer. Site is aquasafecanada.com they have an ebay store. When you get the unit there was no instructions but they can be downloaded from their site. It was pretty straight forward. Just remember the filters arewrapped in plastic, so you gotta open them all up and you have to flush all the filters before you can use the unit.

AKronic said:

I found a really good site that sells ro/di systems for under $300. The one I bought is 7stage and came w/ 6 replacement filters. First 3 stages are 1-5 micron sediment pre filter, 5 micron carbon, 1 micron carbon. Then the ro cartridge and finally 3 separate de-ionizer. Site is aquasafecanada.com they have an ebay store. When you get the unit there was no instructions but they can be downloaded from their site. It was pretty straight forward. Just remember the filters arewrapped in plastic, so you gotta open them all up and you have to flush all the filters before you can use the unit.

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Could you tell me wich one did you buy? I had look ebay and googled in the internet for osmosis system and found that WATTS and iSpring are the ones with the best comments.

I bought the aquarium 7 stage reverse osmosis deionize. Right now it's on sale for 273 usd

I purchased mine for about 80 bucks on Amazon. All I needed to install was a faucet adapter (10 bucks on Amazon) and some teflon tape and that was it. It produces a gallon in about an hour and fifteen minutes. PPM is lowered from 200 to maybe 10.

i purchased from ebay a 5 STAGE REVERSE OSMOSIS SYSTEM - RO WATER FILTER 75 GPD on 9/30/2011 i spent $130 on it.

with that said i am on well water with high amounts of iron..my ppms without the water softner are at about 1300 ppm!

with my RO system brought it down to around 30 ppm,and havent needed to change the filters yet.

even though i purchased an extra set of filters.

no way in hell could i do RDWC with out those filters,and have successful results.

I just went out to the local hardware store (jowes, or hme depot) and got one of there systems 150 bucks i think 5 stage.... one thing you gotta think about is how much water do you need filtered a DAY.. and if you are using it for ice maker/fridge water.. yeah the 150 bucks was ok.. but i would rather spend a little more money for a higher Gallon per day then the one i have.. mine comes with a 5 gallon resivor but when you have a 15 gallon res for the babies... it takes a day or 2 of saving water..

bigp750 said:

I just went out to the local hardware store (jowes, or hme depot) and got one of there systems 150 bucks i think 5 stage.... one thing you gotta think about is how much water do you need filtered a DAY.. and if you are using it for ice maker/fridge water.. yeah the 150 bucks was ok.. but i would rather spend a little more money for a higher Gallon per day then the one i have.. mine comes with a 5 gallon resivor but when you have a 15 gallon res for the babies... it takes a day or 2 of saving water..

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agreed..my unit is rated at 75 gallons per day,and that's BULLSHIT! my tank only holds like a gallon and a half,and takes about an hr to fill it..the math doesn't add up.

Picked up an Eliminator 400 (400 GPD) R/O unit from Hydro Galaxy for ~$250. Couldn't be happier, as this does a WAYYY
better job than my original 60 GPD R/O unit I had since I started growing.

dtischerd said:

agreed..my unit is rated at 75 gallons per day,and that's BULLSHIT! my tank only holds like a gallon and a half,and takes about an hr to fill it..the math doesn't add up.

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GPD is often rated at a specific PSI. If your unit doesn't have a pressure gauge there's no way of truly calculating GPD except by using a timer on a single gallon.
Also, as it is used more, sediment will deposit in the filters and slow the rate.

PetFlora said:

Do not buy the aquarium system. It is for small volume aquariums, and low tds/ppm tap water. It would be no good to you after a couple weeks.

Hydro for mj requires a lot of water. I have 7 plants and go through 5g every 2-3 days

A good RO costs ~> $1000. Mine was $1700

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I've been looking at water lately. $1000-1700 for an RO system is a lot. A whole house water filter system can be had for $1000 and supposedly last for 3-10 years depending on which model, usage, etc. Any thoughts on the whole house approach to handling water? I'd love to change all the water coming in so that there is no city water chlorine/chloramine, heavy metals, etc., etc.

I got my RO/DI unit and replacements from bulkreefsupply.com They have every system to meet every type of need and they are some of the best priced I have found for the quality you get. You can even upgrade to 150 GPD so you don't waste so much water.