Softener. Decisions, decisions... please help.

[Uglyknob]

I am pedantic by nature, so I will try, but likely fail, to make this concise.

I would like to improve the quality of the water in my home in key areas.

In Florida, our water is typically very hard. Mine is about 9gpg according to the salesperson today. I've measured high Calcium and moderate levels of Mag in my water.

PH is 8.1 (de-gassed)
Chloramine as a disinfectant

Part of me wants to do RODI, but I don't want to have to store water, waste a bunch in the process, nor add salts back in to make it safe.

My wife is on home hemodialysis which benefits from cleaner water (machine makes it own RODI, but is limited somewhat by incoming water).

I have a couple fish tanks; one of them is 200g and has live fish and plants. I do a 50% water change once a week.

It is a 4b/2b 2700sq ft, just the two of us - plus the dog and fish tanks.

• I don't want to eliminate Calcium and Mag, just reduce them to whatever healthy/normal is. Also, I need stable water that still has buffering capacity and will not wildly swing PH.
• I would like to reduce the PH somewhat, closer to 7, maybe 7.5. As it is, it creeps up to the point where ammonium can become ammonia - which is harmful to fish.
• I would like to neutralize the chloramine (currently do this with RODI for dialysis and using chemicals for fish).
• I am still researching, but I'm not sure I want sodium salt, even at low levels, as the potassium salts would be better for the plants/fish. Although, even freshwater fish can handle a bit of salt.
• I have very good water pressure and do not want to lose that.

From what I've been able to gather, a softener with a charcoal cannister would accomplish all or most of that.

The folks that were out here earlier, really couldn't address my questions directly. It was a lot of smoke and mirrors with glasses of water and coagulants with dye. I don't care what the TDS of the water is, just what those particles are. Also, drinking RODI water that is pure water with zero TDS is not good for you, or anything. Although, maybe I misunderstood where they were going with that. Not to mention the 4500 dollar price tag, which seems exorbitant to me. (They said it was commercial grade, but it is just pentair/fleck - although the salesperson didn't know what Fleck is.

There is a kinetico dealer local to me, and they have good reviews, but I saw a couple comments here about service and finding parts.

I guess my main problem is that I am data oriented, but most of the sites I can find are just throwing around subjective terms with neither data nor prices.

What manufacturer or series should I be looking at?
How do I determine how much softer the water will be? Can I dial that up or down?
How much salt (Na/K) are we talking? Are some better at keeping this low than others?

I did like the Kinetico from the sense that it switches tanks to provide water all the time. If the softener was to bypass during a water change to recharge, that could kill all my fish. Sudden changes in their osmotic processes from a change like that would not be ideal.

I guess I'm just lost and overcomplicating things and I feel like the salespeople are trying to bury me in BS instead of usable data. Any help, direction, links, etc, are welcome. I did try searching, but searching for things like "best water softener" bring up about every thread.

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[Reach4]

It took me a bit to figure out that "RODI" was referring to a deionization resin preceded by a reverse osmosis unit.

If the softener was to bypass during a water change to recharge, that could kill all my fish.

The softening only bypasses during a time window of your choosing. Typically on the order of 1.4 hours. So if you set up the typical softener to regen at 2am, the default, bypassing is all done by 3:30am.

If the automatic aquarium filler activated during that interval, the RO would stop the hardness ions that came through.

For drinking, you can use a "remineralization" cartridge. However very little of your minerals comes from drinking water, but the great majority comes with food. That may not apply for fish. Since mineralized water usually tastes better, that is a good enough reason itself to remineralize your drinking water.

Regarding Kinetico, service and parts must come through the dealer who has the territory. For many others, you can buy parts from more than one allowed dealer. You might have trouble getting parts shipped, but grey market (legal and real, but not officially sanctioned by the maker) parts can sometimes be found.