How long can you store water?

Probably another newb question but my wife asked last night and I did not know the answer, so here we go:

1) How long can you store RO/DI water in a covered 5 gallon bucket before you should dump?

2) How long can you store Salt water.

Explanation: I have (5) 5 gallon covered buckets that I have filled with RO/DI water. (2) of those I added salt and mixed using a power head for 24 hours. I use these for water changes and adding fresh water. With a 29 gallon tank I have not used much and so this caused my wife to ask the crazy question that stumped me .

Thanks in adavance!

Jay

 

Ive read many posts on this issue and none of them seemed to have a definite answer. I believe as long as the bucket is sealed, the best it can, it should last for sometime. Thats what I got from what I have read; I am interested to know what others think.

 

I make my RO in a 10g barrel, with a lid, Just to be safe I test it before I use it, and I have never had any problems....Its also there as an emergency tank, god forbid.....

 

i make mine in a 55 gal drum and i slowly pull from it over the course of 2-3 months.

 

RO/DI can be stored indefinitely if it is air tight.

Saltwater... I've stored that for over 6 months in an airtight container.

If it's not air tight, saltwater requires circulation or it'll get rank in a shortish time period. If it has circulation, it can last pretty much forever too.


If it's not air tight, RO/DI won't be RO/DI for very long at all. RO/DI attracts crap out of the air. Well, probably exaggerating... But that's not to say it will be unusable... just not DTS=0.

BUT, to counter what I said, my auto dosing (Mg, Ca, Alk) jugs get refilled with RO/DI and mix once a year or so? Point is they sit on the shelf for a long time and are not air tight.

 

Thanks for all the feedback! I am happy to find out that I can still use all this water that takes forever to make . I am not sure if these buckets can be considered air tight they just have a standard lid that snaps down. I just bought an 8 gallon biocube that I will be using with a 10 gallon refuge so maybe I will start going through it quicker now!

Thanks,
Jay

 

You can store water forever. Actually, your water has already been here for eons. You only purified your water and moved it from one place to another.

But, is there an issue with storage? Yes. Remember, water is a solvent. The most common issue is contamination from sources like your container or cigarette smoke, or whatever. Make sure that your container is inert so that materials from your container don't end up in your water. This is the most common issue that takes a little thought and that can lead a few to mistakenly conclude that water cannot be stored.

I'm confident that you'd be happy, for your purposes, if you stored your water in those 5 gallon water containers that are used specifically to store drinking water.