Why you should taste the water in your bucket

I decided I’d take tonight and do a water change as well as refill my reservoir for my Auto Top Off (ATO) so I loaded up 3 white 5 gallon jugs, mixed salt in two of them, and left the other one 100% pure RO/DI.

I pulled out my 10g of tank water, refilled with one of the white jugs, grabbed the other white jug, refilled my sump, turned on my return pump and then wondered why the water in my tank looked like water when fresh and salt water are mixing together.

OH Sh!!….!

I realized in that moment that I had grabbed the jug of RO/DI water and used it to do my water change thinking it was salt water. OOPS. Luckily only 2G or so had been pulled out of my sump so I turned off my return pump, and immediately started pumping water out of my sump and into a bucket.

Pulling water out one’s tank is never an exact science so of course I needed to mix up more salt water. To my good fortune, dapettit and I got my RO/DI unit up and rolling last week so all I had to do was walk out to my garage and start mixing.

If I had been relying on the Local Fish Store to supply all my water, then I’d be waiting till tomorrow to get any water….(not a good thing) because I would have been out!

So lessons learned:

1. Be prepared…get yourself an RO/DI unit or at least have tons of water ready to go. I’d advise to always have at least 10G on hand.

2. Always have enough salt around to be able to mix up some salt water if need be. Again, be prepared.

3. Get a good labeling system for your RO/DI water! Yes, I could have stuck my finger in there and tasted it, but a system that is fail safe (aka your wife can do it when you aren’t around b/c she isn’t going to taste the water) is a great thing!

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