What to Expect When You Get Your reverse osmosis Unit

Back again with another article from the Wattley Discus Hatchery, I’m Gabe Posada. Today we’re going to show you how to install a reverse osmosis (RO) unit. I know that after all that the tutorials we’ve been putting out, everybody’s excited to see the eggs hatch, so it’s the perfect time to go over the RO unit. Whether you buy it from us or whether you buy it from anybody, this is how you’re going to do your install. We will go over how you are going to assemble it when it comes to you, because when it’s delivered everything is sealed in the box and it looks very sophisticated. Although it looks very rough, it’s actually very simple to put together.

Setting Up the Reverse Osmosis Unit

When you receive the RO unit, chances are it’s going look like the one in the video. It’ll come with three filters, a membrane, inflow and outflow hoses, and some chlorine and chloramine. First, we take out the chlorine and chloramine so that the chemicals will not destroy your membrane. Now, this membrane is a 100 gallon per day membrane. That probably sounds like a lot, but it’s going to take this unit 24 hours to produce 100 gallons, and a 30-gallon pail will take around eight hours to filter. Keep that in mind. It’s not like you’re buying something huge that you don’t need.

The Ro unit will come with three filters, the first two being carbon filters, and the third is a sediment filter. This will make sure that there’s no particulates or anything that goes straight through and clogs up your membrane. When you first get it, everything will be wrapped up in plastic and there are little blue clips all over. First, you remove the clips and once you have the clips out, all you do is take your nail, push this in and the hose is going to slide right out. It’s a pressure fitting. You opened this up and make sure that the black rubber seal comes on the outside. You slide it right in. Seal this up again, get it as tight as possible and make sure that it’s facing the same way it was when you took it off. You slide the hose back in, pull it, and you’ll notice it doesn’t come out and that’s where you want to slide your clip right back in. Now your membrane is done.

Identifying Inflow and Outflow

You now must figure out which is the primary entrance. The red is where your city water’s going to go in. It will tell you right on the side and you’ll want to make sure that this is chamber number one. Chambers one and two will hold the carbon and the last one, chamber three, will be the sediment filter.

Be careful because sometimes the washers fall off. Now just slide it in, put it together and remember the first two are carbon, and the third is sediment. We had our unit designed for 100 gallons per day with two carbon stages and a sediment filter. We also added a garden hose adapter to make the process simpler. Now, the same principle as before, you’re red is your inlet water. What you do next is you’re going to slide this right through, pull on it and it shouldn’t come out anymore unless you press on it. And this already comes with a washer and everything to hook up to your garden hose so you can hook it up to the garden hose without any problem whatsoever. The red is your inlet, so the blue is the product water. Product water means that this is the one that the RO unit passes through the membrane and creates the low conductivity water that we use for breeding.

Collecting Product Water

We’ve ordered a float switch to automatically shut of the water when it gets to the top of the container so that it doesn’t overflow. If it takes 24 hours to fill a tank, you’re going to need a float to automatically shut the system down, so you don’t have to watch it constantly. Once it’s full, we suggest using a garbage pail as the collection unit. You will need to use a 7/16 drill bit to drill a hole through the side of the bucket towards the top. It has got a washer on it and once you have the hole drilled in your garbage pail, you just slide the pump through the hole. Once it’s in, you put the little threaded nuts right on it and then at the very end you’re going to slide the pressure seal through.

Now that you’ve got everything hooked up. You slide this through, okay, got all the washers and everything inside. You insert it and just tighten it and once you start to tighten, you’re going to get a water seal right here and the unit is ready to go.

Discharge Water

There is a black hose, and this hose is where the wastewater with all the concentrated minerals will come out of. It’s what we call the discharge water and is typically the stuff that you throw away. I’m going to be honest with you though, I have used this discharge water in the past for grow out tanks so that we didn’t waste so much water. If you can set up a secondary barrel to collect this water, you can take advantage of the bad water for growing out.

Setting Up A Reverse Osmosis Unit Doesn’t Have to Be Hard

Setting up an RO unit doesn’t have to be complicated. We have just shown you how to set up your RO Unit for 100 gallons. Now if you guys decide to do it on your own and get your own parts and everything, then you’re going to need all these things that we’re talking about to make it work otherwise you’re going to be inventing a lot of stuff.

We hope that this article helps you guys better understand what a reverse osmosis unit is, and how to set one up. As always, it is our pleasure to bring you more helpful content. We hope you enjoy this stuff as much as we enjoy making it! I’m Gabe Posada at the jack Wattley Discus Hatchery and I realize you guys have a ton of questions and want more content, so stay tuned because we will be consistently dropping more tips, tutorials and overall cool discus hobby related videos and articles. Thank you for coming and don’t forget to look for us on every platform, because we’re out there. Check out our website at Wattleydiscus.com to find our new RO unit for only $150 delivered.