Preserving large amounts of r.o. water

I'm a soil grower but just set up an r.o. system where I can just scoop as I go instead of relying on one 18 cup purifier to work tirelessly on building up gallons of water.

Its 44 gal capacity, I have 2 air stones in it right now, probably 36 gals in there currently. My plants are now seedings so don't take much water yet(got a little too excited and wanted to see it in action so I filled it all the way when, now thinking about it, I really didn't need to do that much yet).
Non the less I would still like to always keep plenty stock piled so what do i do to keep it good and fresh?

Air stones on 24/7 or is that too much? Keep it mostly sealed up or does it not matter?
Am I going to need to be adding anything special to it?

I appreciate any help!

I store mine in a 55 gal barrel, one small air pump and stone. I dose it with Hydroguard as a preventative.

Make coffee with it, kool aid ..whatevs use it up..especially only using very little at this time.

WeedFreak78 said:

I store mine in a 55 gal barrel, one small air pump and stone. I dose it with Hydroguard as a preventative.

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Thats heck of expensive "preventative"! Hydroguard is better served on root zones, not in yer water tank surely?!

I have a 32gal RO res that tops off automatically to a float valve. It is firmly sealed and I can pump out when fresh water is needed. Sealing keeps out the nasties, and the black plastic keeps out all light.

A few ml of 30% H2O2 every week keeps it super clean and breaks down to harmless oxygen - in a year or so of use i've never even had to empty the tank or scrub it down. No airstones required.

Conversely, I reclaim condensate from AC and dehu for reuse and these similarly organized tanks need cleaning every month or so (probably because pathogens may be coming off these units). Again, a few ml of H2O2 ought to kill everything off and keep you in clean water.

Thanks for the input guys, I appreciate it

Well I have another question on this. I had another thread on this going because at first no-one was responding to one of them. Someone told me what they do so I followed what they did. Not saying what they do is wrong or anything like that but here's the question.

Is it normal for this stockpiled water to give off a dirty feet type of smell? The water was good and fresh(no odor or smell) for about 3 weeks and I added 2ml/gal of the 2 or 3 percent h2o2 and about a week later the water started smelling. I emptied it out and added new fresh water yesterday, I did not scrub the barrel though and it still smells. Is this okay? I'm to the point now where I will be using the water pretty regularly and will be adding to it and taking from it on occasion. Is this bad to have this odor lingering in the barrel, could it cause root rot or any other problems?

I've kept it covered anytime I'm not dipping out of it and have had two air stones in it.

NugHeuser said:

Well I have another question on this. I had another thread on this going because at first no-one was responding to one of them. Someone told me what they do so I followed what they did. Not saying what they do is wrong or anything like that but here's the question.

Is it normal for this stockpiled water to give off a dirty feet type of smell? The water was good and fresh(no odor or smell) for about 3 weeks and I added 2ml/gal of the 2 or 3 percent h2o2 and about a week later the water started smelling. I emptied it out and added new fresh water yesterday, I did not scrub the barrel though and it still smells. Is this okay? I'm to the point now where I will be using the water pretty regularly and will be adding to it and taking from it on occasion. Is this bad to have this odor lingering in the barrel, could it cause root rot or any other problems?

I've kept it covered anytime I'm not dipping out of it and have had two air stones in it.

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Your water should not stink any you should drain and clean everything with a bleach solution then rinse and refill

+1 Hydroguard and coffee, really gets things moving in the morning.

The smell is likely coming from the air you're pumping through it.

I wouldn't aerate it at all. Just aerate a smaller container before you water your plants and leave the bulk tank alone. An hour with two stones going is plenty to get as much O2 into the water as it can hold anyway.

I'll need something like that myself pretty soon. The 5gal jugs get expensive.

Hydrogen peroxide is your friend when it comes to sterile clean oxygenated water. A small magnetic drive pump will keep keep things moving. Hydroguard is nothing more than generic bacillus strains that are used to colonize rhizosphere (Roots)

If you aren't storing your water in a pressurized hermetically sealed tank it's going to go bad. You could store it for a while in sterilized jugs that are sealed tight. Any other way and microbes and bacteria will enter the water and start to reproduce. It's not a good idea to store the water if you cannot do it properly.

Kerovan said:

If you aren't storing your water in a pressurized hermetically sealed tank it's going to go bad. You could store it for a while in sterilized jugs that are sealed tight. Any other way and microbes and bacteria will enter the water and start to reproduce. It's not a good idea to store the water if you cannot do it properly.

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So how long would you consider a while to be? If I were to store some in gallon jugs?

NugHeuser said:

So how long would you consider a while to be? If I were to store some in gallon jugs?

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It's hard for me to judge. If the jugs are sterilized and made of glass and sealed tight, kept in a dark, cool area it might be a year or more. Or maybe not, lots of factors can affect it and I am no expert by a long shot. Certainly it should last long enough for you to use up in a reasonable amount of time though during a grow.

@Kerovan
Okay yeah it deffinitely wouldn't be sitting around that long.

I've had the lid on the barrel which fits pretty tight but not air tight.

My r.o. system consists of just your average 18 cup purifier, I have 3 of them.
But on my last grow for some pretty small plants all I was ever doing when I wasn't working was trying to fill jugs of water, would take several hours to build up a few gallons.

So that's where I made this new setup with 3 purifiers that I sit on a pallet on top of the barrel, drilled a hole in each and ran a rubber hose out of it so I could just pour tap into the purifiers and walk away, and it would drain into the barrel. This way on days that I water I can just scoop out the several gallons I need and only take a minute.

The "preserving" part about this post was because I had a set back and had to restart and it would be a while before I started using the water again.

Now at the point I'm at right now I'll be using probably around 5 to 10 gallons a week I would guess so I was thinking of filling it up half to most the way (I think 30 or 40 gallons, something like that) and I would continuously be adding to it on days that I have the time to, and taking from it when needed.
So there should be a healthy exchange going on but non the less water would be in this barrel for the next few months.

So given all those details, a continuous exchange of water, but still containing a fair amount of water in the barrel for the next few months, does that sound like a problem?

Kerovan said:

If you aren't storing your water in a pressurized hermetically sealed tank it's going to go bad. You could store it for a while in sterilized jugs that are sealed tight. Any other way and microbes and bacteria will enter the water and start to reproduce. It's not a good idea to store the water if you cannot do it properly.

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Nope. Wrong. Only unsealed stagnant water lacking o2 goes bad. That’s why airstones, water pumps and oxidizer are your fritnd. Keep it cool and don’t let light in it and you’ll be fine.

Kerovan said:

If you aren't storing your water in a pressurized hermetically sealed tank it's going to go bad. You could store it for a while in sterilized jugs that are sealed tight. Any other way and microbes and bacteria will enter the water and start to reproduce. It's not a good idea to store the water if you cannot do it properly.

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what do you mean bad? I have a 55 barrel I work from, and it can sit for weeks. worse then that at work, we store water in rubber maid trash cans with a lid, for weeks; and that's for use on corals, you can loose a whole frag tray in hours if you fuck it up.

I think so long as, its not getting warm(ed), or in any light. you can store RO water for awhile.


I don't feed from the storage though, its goes to a mixing smaller 25gal , with a small pump pointing down, so nothing settles for at least 20 minutes, mostly because I have to wait to add the cal-mag.

SoOLED said:

what do you mean bad? I have a 55 barrel I work from, and it can sit for weeks. worse then that at work, we store water in rubber maid trash cans with a lid, for weeks; and that's for use on corals, you can loose a whole frag tray in hours if you fuck it up.

I think so long as, its not getting warm(ed), or in any light. you can store RO water for awhile.


I don't feed from the storage though, its goes to a mixing smaller 25gal , with a small pump pointing down, so nothing settles for at least 20 minutes, mostly because I have to wait to add the cal-mag.

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As stated above I run an RO filter into trash can storage and draw on it when I need to (multiple times per week). The can is hard to get to and hasn't been cleaned since I put it in 15 months ago. It is well sealed with tightly fitting hoses and the water is totally clean. No airstones either; only RO in/RO out at 0ppm.