TDS Meter

[Steelers7]

I picked up one of those TDS meters from Buy.com. Unfortunately, I'm not using RO water right now. My tap reads 141, I tested a bottle of Dasani water, and that read 22.

Will the TDS meter be able to read the saltwater in my tank. I wanted to know because I'm running some products like Chemi pure, and phosgaurd to remove some of the metals in the tap and wanted to see how well their working. Is that possible?

[crappyballer]

i was kinda thinking the same thing but i am sure the salt will affect the reading as a contaminant.i'm not positive on that though anyone else know for sure?

[Matt Rogers]

I had similar thoughts when I got mine a few years back and was told it was only for freshwater. I have a brain cell that is telling me that I read it in the manual of mine too, not positive though.

[amcarrig]

Right, if you stick a tds meter into saltwater, you will get a reading (salt is a dissolved solid if I'm not mistaken). Also, I'm not surprised that you got a reading from your bottled water as the bottlers replace trace minerals and whatnot after running the water through an RO unit.

[reef_guru]

What is TDS?

TDS is an acronym for Total Dissolved Solids. Water contains a variety of minerals
And salts, such as calcium, magnesium, carbonate, chloride and nitrate etc. TDS is
The parameter that measures the sum of all these compounds. The lower the
Reading the less compounds present.

so with that your levels should be high.

[Camilsky]

so with that your levels should be high.

Used lab (analytical) TDS to "test" my water. The machine went crazy, and informed me (beeping like f%$#%$@ crazy) it can't perform measurement because of extremely high readouts ...

Cheers...

[Reefdiver72]

They do make machines to check everything in your water if you have the cash I find it cheaper just to send it to a lab if I am really in doubt. But good test kits get relatively close. It just takes alot of diffrent test kits at 20.+ a kit.