My 300 Gallon sps tank

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Oh, probably a silly question but how does an ro/di unit affect the waters hardness or does it?
Hardness is a mixture of various minerals dissolved in the water, usually containing Calcium & magnesium...just not the Ca & Mg salts we *want *in our salt water in the tank; what 'hardness' is varies from place to place.
Reverse osmosis (the RO in RO/DI) is the process of forcing a solvent (in this case water part of your hard water) from a region of high solute concentration (lots of dissolved minerals) through a semipermeable membrane to a region of low solute concentration by applying a pressure in excess of the osmotic pressure ...so at my house I have a booster pump on my RO/DI unit to make this happen.
Deionized water, also known as demineralized water (the DI on your RO/DI unit), is water that has had its mineral ions removed, such as cations like sodium, calcium, iron, and copper, and anions such as chloride and sulfate. Deionization is a chemical process that uses specially manufactured ion-exchange resins which exchange hydrogen ion and hydroxide ion for dissolved minerals, which then recombine to form water (definitions are off of WikiPedia...they do a great job!).
Itsa 2 step process, the 'hardness' (= a mixture of various minerals in your water) is removed, then more is removed which makes for very pure water.

Then we dump a bunch of salt in it ! Crazy, huh!?!:der::der:
 
That's good to know, I've been studying(I know, shocking) on preparing and getting a feel for my return, leaning towards a 90 rr or a 110 tall rr tank, and a 30 - 55 gallon sump(can you effectively run a fuge in the sump?) Going to go with the led's for lighting, will start calling obd when build time gets closer. Still trying to decide on the skimmer part of the equation though. I've only got about 23 inches of height to work with, if I go with the 55 gallon sump it will have to be an in sump skimmer. Any thoughts?
 
Hard to say what is going to work or not, I am still using sea swirls........................lol. All depends on your rock structure and whatever. Research em and see what people are saying about them is about all I can do for ya :).
 
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