Aquatic Life RO Buddie 4-Stage Reverse Osmosis Deionization Water Filter System RO/DI Filtration Units for Aquarium, 50 GPD

I am only getting half the rated flow in Atlanta on this unit. The restriction seems to be the RU unit, all other units allow water to flow at a high rate. I followed the directions and I tested each piece individually. Water supply is coming straight of the main supply to the house. 24 gallons a day is significantly less than the 50 gallons a day this is ‘rated’ for. I plan to return it if it doesn’t improve over the course of today. Everything else looks of good quality.They replaced it and the new unit is flowing great - better than expected in fact!Update months later I have regularly filling 5 gallon jugs and with each fill the flow is better - a few times I’ve flooded the floor it went that much faster than expected!! So far I’ve used a couple of inches of the ionization filter and am happy with the performance. Much cheaper and easier than store bought.

Used this a couple times now to make about 15 gallons of water for a 16 gallon biocube and got no complaints. I live in an apartment and hook it right up to my bathroom sink. They include all the necessary adatopters to screw it right in. Just take the aerator off. I read horror stories on here of leaking so I put it in my tub expecting the worst. No leaks at all from the unit. Tiniest little dribble from the faucet but to be expected. Old corrorated faucet meeting plastic was not a match made in heaven but a tinder fling that works just fine. Makes water at about the rate advertised. I've timed it and it's pretty dam close. Any variation probably due to my water pressure and nothing to raise any concern. I haven't tested tds from the unit but others have stated they get zero or near zero and I expect that's what I'm getting here. Switching to Ro/di has put the breaks on my nuisance algea and my sps polyps are extending much much better.Very easy to install. Directions are decent and there's a video on YouTube that walks you through step by step. They even give you a little razer blade to cut the tubes. I didn't find it until after I set it up, but used a real sharp pair of scissors and that worked too. I'd definitely use the razer blade tho. Makes a much cleaner cut. To those who are getting terrible leaks you did something wrong or your water pressure is way too high. Idk what else to tell u. Take it apart and follow the instructions to the T or find a way to reduce the water pressure. Leaks from the faucet definitely use the new oring they provide and make sure your not cross threading anything in there. Should work out for you too.Overall pretty good and happy with the purchase. Hard to justify the pricier units when making such small amounts of water for a nano tank. Well see how it holds up and I'll change the review if things head south. Happy so far tho!

works great. dropped water-softened well water from 125 ppm to 1 ppm. generates 1 gal waste-water to 0.5 gal RO water. generates 1 gal RO water in about 45ish minutes.for $70, it's well worth the price. will update review when the filters expire.

The product is a easy setup and works, the only con for me is that the male/female adapter that screws where the aerator sits is made out of cheap plastic and broke easily on testing the product. Since it was working before trying to remove and breaking i went to buy another.. the only problem with that is they don't sell the cheap plastic piece they sell a metal adapter. Why wouldn't you charge the extra 10 bucks and send your customers the better quality parts so we don't have to worry about getting the m/f adapter out of the faucet? other than that this product is as advertised, a great cost effective RO system for small aquariums and in my case small time growers.

Very happy with this product. I got the DI package for my carnivorous plants, but also wanted to use it for drinking water (we are on a small tribal water system where quality is sometimes unreliable and the nearest town where you can buy RO in is a former superfund site).We used a 1/4" Y fitting to split the water after the RO membrane with 1 tube going to a ball valve and then the DI unit and the other side going to another ball valve and then the Watts PH Balancing & re-mineralizing Filter. The ball valves here may be overkill, but I didn't want to risk any back-flow into the DI unit. We used some blue 1/4" tubing so we would know which one was the drinking water tube. We used about 6 feet of tubing after both the DI and Watts filter and then another ball valve and another 20 or so inches of tubing, so the tubing stays in place in 5 gallon bottles and the flow can be turned off right at the bottle. You could one ball valve on each side.We tried drinking the RO without the Watts filter because I couldn't imagine it being as bad as people claimed. But it was. RO changes the Ph to acid (?) and lack of minerals leaves it flat. My husband said he thought it tasted like a bird had pooped in his mouth. I said it was more like bat guano. Neither of us asked how the other knew what bird or bat feces tasted like. I think that's why our marriage has endured so many decades. People need secrets. Anyway, if you're hesitating on getting the Watts Ph and re-mineralizing filter, do yourself a favor and buy it. It is providing the best tasting water I have ever drank. Except for the water we got from the spring on our property we knew had arsenic in it from a former gold mine. That stuff was delicious. Unhealthy, but fantastic tasting.In case you miss it, the pamphlet directions say to let the water run through the filter for 30 minutes before hooking up the RO membrane cartridge. However, the label on the filter says to run it 1 hour before hooking up the RO membrane. Run it an hour. This is definitely an important step.We have ours set up outside by our outdoor shower. It gets morning sun. After about 2 weeks, the resin in the DI cartridge had fully changed color, despite having only run about a half gallon of water through it. We do have a fair bit of rust sometimes and I thought perhaps it was that. I pulled out my TDS meter today because carnivorous plants ain't cheap to replace. Although it looked like it was exhausted and fully color changed, the TDS meter still showed 0.00. I then double-checked the TDS meter was working properly with several other levels of filtered water. So, even if your DI resin looks as though it has changed color completely you'll want to see what the actual TDS output is. In the future I'd either cover my DI cartridge or keep it out of the sun.Lastly, we have terribly low water pressure. Our water comes from a ground well, then is pumped up a hill a few feet into a storage tank, then is gravity fed to houses. I thought the water was partially turned off the first time I turned a tap on here, it's that low pressure. I'm not sure exactly what it is, pressure-wise, but I've never seen such low pressure outside of spring-fed systems without any storage tank. Anyway, we still get about 2 gallons per hour out of this RO unit. Our water starts out generally at around 90 ppm, so not too much to remove and maybe that's why it still gives decent output at such low pressure, idk. Just thought I'd mention it because our low water pressure was one thing that caused me to hesitate in buying an RO unit so long.This is so much more convenient (and reliable) than dragging home bottles of distilled water for carnivorous plants and refilling bottles for drinking water at the market.In sum, this item is a great deal and I would recommend it for drinking and DI water uses.