I have an RO/DI filter system that I bought new about four years ago. I waited about a year and replaced all the filters (except RO membrane) and bought a refillable DI canister and plenty of resin so I could refill when needed. About a year and a half ago my water production went way up and I couldn't figure out what was going on but thought it was from changing the pre-filters to those available at Home Depot. I broke my tank down about a year ago to move and towards the end it wasn't looking great. The nitrate, phosphate, etc... was still measuring zero, but I had algae and my SPS were struggling.
I started up a new tank about 3 months ago and have been struggling with hair algae which I expected, but it has not gone away. I test and my nitrate/phosphate are reading zero. I suspect my RO membrane is bad, but I don't have a TDS meter. I was going to order a TDS meter and a new RO membrane just to check this out, btu wanted to see if anyone had any advice. The weird thing is I got the color changing DI resin and I figured if the RO membrane was bad the resin would change color fairly quickly since it was now filtering everything. It hasn't changed color at all, and I know this is obvious now but I realized that the rate of change of the DI would be unaffected by a failure since it only removes ionized particles.
So my questions are: Should I just replace the RO membrane or the entire unit? How do RO membranes normally fail, i.e. is a big increase in output usually part of the failure? Is there something in my tank I can test other than ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, phosphate, to see if I am getting bad water quality?
thanks for the help,
chris
I started up a new tank about 3 months ago and have been struggling with hair algae which I expected, but it has not gone away. I test and my nitrate/phosphate are reading zero. I suspect my RO membrane is bad, but I don't have a TDS meter. I was going to order a TDS meter and a new RO membrane just to check this out, btu wanted to see if anyone had any advice. The weird thing is I got the color changing DI resin and I figured if the RO membrane was bad the resin would change color fairly quickly since it was now filtering everything. It hasn't changed color at all, and I know this is obvious now but I realized that the rate of change of the DI would be unaffected by a failure since it only removes ionized particles.
So my questions are: Should I just replace the RO membrane or the entire unit? How do RO membranes normally fail, i.e. is a big increase in output usually part of the failure? Is there something in my tank I can test other than ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, phosphate, to see if I am getting bad water quality?
thanks for the help,
chris
