Aquatic Life RO Buddie 3-Stage Hydroponic RO Filter, 75 GPD

Size & Setup: The Aquatic Life RO Buddie 4-stage RO/DI unit is compact and easy to set up, making it ideal for smaller spaces or hobbyists who don’t need a large permanent system. Performance & Water Quality: Despite its size, it’s very effective, producing clean, high-quality RO/DI water suitable for aquariums and other uses. Maintenance Considerations: Because of the smaller filters, you’ll need to change the cartridges more frequently, depending on your incoming water quality and total gallons processed. Final Verdict: If you want a small, effective RO/DI system, this unit does the job well. Just be aware of the more frequent filter changes due to its compact design.

I purchased the RO Buddie 4-stage RO/DI 50 GPD filter. This is for my small freshwater setup which includes seven tanks of varying volumes with a total volume of just under 100 gallons. I went with the RODI and not just RO system because I am trying to decrease the alkalinity of my water. So far so good after filtering 10 gallons of RO/DI water. It's very easy to set up and my water parameters have come out excellent with zero PPM TDS and zero EC (see attached photos, the meter was calibrated today). I live in Coastal Georgia and have moderately soft water parameters from the tap at around 150 PPM TDS (total dissolved solids) with a significant amount of EC (electrical conductivity) due to the high amount of minerals in the water. So basically very low sediment but high mineralization and somewhat moderate GH and KH. I have had a hard time keeping my South American tanks at good parameters for my tetras to breed and this will help immensely if it continues to work as it has so far. A Few Tips: - tighten the deionization filter cap before you install, I had a small leak as mine was somewhat loose but that was easy to fix and find and I just tightened the cap of the actual filter body itself and the leak stopped. To do it correctly I took all the hoses out and tightened it that way so I would not torque the hose connections. - this can be run off of any hose or even many kitchen and bathroom sink setups if you take out the aerator from your faucet. I am personally running it off of my laundry room and it's running beautifully as there is both a supply of cold water and a drain for the wastewater. - if you're going to install it in your laundry room all you need is a t-joint hose splitter or some other sort of double hose splitter that fits the receptacle for your washing machines supply water and gray water drain (see attached photos of my setup, everyone's will vary and I had to measure mine specifically as there are a huge variety of hose splitters) - if you are are doing a laundry room setup like mine where you can mount it close to the washing machine then the amount of hose provided in the kit will be more than sufficient. However if you are doing some other sort of setup you may want to buy additional hose, as you will need not just the proper amount of hose for the treated water but also the appropriate length of hose for wastewater. You could of course use a bucket but if you want to appropriately drain it to a sink or drain, getting additional hose maybe necessary. - if you are using this for a freshwater setup like I am you must absolutely get an additive that will keep the GH and KH at appropriate levels. RODI water by itself will kill fish. - Read the darn instructions. For a cheap system like this they are actually fairly detailed and obviously written by somebody who speaks English fluently. - having a solid set of channel locks or a wrench that will fit into a small area, as well as Teflon tape for the female ends of the threaded connections, will help reduce the potential for leaks. I am on city water that withdraws from a river and and underground aquifer and it is at a fairly high PSI as I live only 2 mi from the treatment center. All in all I am really pleased so far as this is the least expensive system I could find. This would not be an appropriate system for drinking water as the pressure/supply would not be great enough to fill a glass in a reasonable amount of time. Right now I am averaging about 5 gallons of treated water every 90 minutes (around 80 GPD) which is far above the 50 gallons per day that the system rated for, although I expect that to eventually go down as the sediment and carbon filters begin to fill with debris. That said, I am currently probably experiencing closer to a 75 GPD or even 100 GPD system which got $70 is impossible to beat. As an added bonus when the RO finally wears out I can replace it with one of their 75 GPD or 100 GPD rated filters so long as I swap out the The 450cc flow restrictor for an 800cc flow restrictor, thus functionally increasing the output of the system. This will of course wear out the DI filter faster. I will update this review if anything changes but so far I am pleased. For some reason Amazon's AI wants me to comment on the noise level which is silly for a system of this low of a flow rate. If it's making any noise louder than a few gurgles and bubbling sounds that you can only hear when you are right next to it then there is probably something wrong with the system like over pressure or an incorrectly installed hose connection which is creating suction and/or air intrusion somewhere. So, tldr, it doesn't make any noise. In summary, it's a cheap effective system that took me about 20 minutes to install with just the parts in the box and the hose splitter I bought. Hard to go wrong at this price point. I would recommend this to anyone who needs a small amount of water for weekly or bi-weekly water changes and is trying to keep the GH and KH of the water column down (i.e. slightly acidic or neutral). note: The picture system has not been fastened to my wall yet nor have I done any hose management so bear that in mind as well.

I dont see why someone could write a bad review on this RO aquatic filter...... it works like a dream, 2:1 wast water, 10 minutes to connect to water supply and mount. What can I say it works like a dream. I use it for a hydroponic setup on a 4×8 flood table with 28 plants in 3 gallon fabric pots it so far it works perfectly... time will tell if it holds up but for the price and performance I'm extremely happy with my purchase... I spent hours looking at all the different RO water filter on Amazon and I finally decided on this one and I'm happy I did. I purchased a float valve separately to have automatic shutoff on my water tank to complete my system. With automatic water feeding and the float valve the system pretty much runs itself. Hope this review helps someone else with there RO water filter decision. If i run into any problem in the future I'll be sure to report back.

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.

This is it!! Saves driving to fish store. 40$ weekly water prices. Hooked mine to shower head. FYI, get the adapters !!! Use shower head (will leak little) or use faucet. If you can find the adapter that fits into those psychotic mythical perfect fits. Once it works. Run it and toss first bucket. Then your rolling. Keep pressure low on water honestly and push those hoses in tighter to stop the leaks on the unit. I put mine in a 5 gal bucket and its bone dry after reapply pressure into all tubing to make it leak proof. Should only leak from connection. As long as its consistent giving you clean water. Your solid. Shower heads have alot of pressure so go for anything you csn regulate

I bought this system about a month ago on Amazon for my 36 gallon reef tank. I live in NYC and the weather has been fairly nice. First of all this system doesn't hook up to anything inside my house which can be a pain in the ass but I read this in the reviews and expected it. I went to the outside to hook up my system to the hose, flushed for 30 min and followed all the directions to get the system up and running. My plan was to produce 5 to 10 gallons at a time ad store them for my weekly water changes. After letting the system run for about an hour I had almost no RODI water produced. I figured I would let it run for a while longer. It took over 24 hours just to produce 5 gallons of RODI water. Now i know the temp of the water makes a difference, but my water is not coming from mount Everest or the north pole. This is ridiculous. I figured it might be the water pressure, which i know is good, but i gave the system the benefit of the doubt. I brought the system to work ( in the firehouse) and hooked it up to the hose we use to fill the tanks on the firetruck, more then enough pressure. The system was plugged in at 8am and by 8am the next day i had 2 1/2 gallons of RODI water. I plan to call aquatic life today and will update this post with the follow up... also after only 7 1/2 gallons of rodi produced my Di filter is starting to change colors.... hey aquatic life i know i didn't buy the best product, or even the better product... but 50 gallons per day my @$$... Update 4/28/2017 Spoke to someone in customer service named Dave...He was very helpful in giving me a reason for the problem. He informed me that due to me geographic location(NYC) and a recent issue they are having here with the water and the amount of sediment in it, That is why my system has clogged so rapidly. His claim is that the system is working great, probably too good because the sediment is being taken out of the water and clogging all the filters. Now since i do not have any proof of this until i cut the filter open I am inclined to believe him. But on the flip side this doesn't solve my issue of needing Rodi water and paying 90 dollars for a unit I can not use at this time. Frustrating to say the least. Like buying a new car without the wheels and no other tire will fit that car. Nice to look at but does nothing for you!.. So I have increased my ranking by 1 star for customer service and will update this review again when I receive the replacement filters that were promised to me and try them out in another area outside of the suspected high sediment area. 5/4/2017 Received my replacement filters today... shipping was fast and I will be setting up the system tomorrow and trying it out... ill re-post when I see some results! May 7 2017 So officially hope the product up and started using it with the new replacement filters in a different state then I originally used the product in at first it was producing one gallon of Rodi water in 30 minutes after about an hour and a half it's slowed it took close to five hours to produce 5 gallons of finished water I have recently re started a new 5 gallon pail and I will post how long it takes to fill it in its entirety.... at this rate of a gallon an hour though I will be producing 24 gallons of Rodi water per day not 50 as advertised I guess I should just be happy I'm actually producing water this time.... I am very dissatisfied with this product and plan to call the manufacturer again on Monday as of now I say save your money and buy a different product so you're not disappointed I will update again after I speak to the manufacturer. Update: I have run the system with the new cartridges and with the same result, after only 6 gallons of RODI water produced, the sediment filter is clogged and unusable. asking for a refund in the morning from company!!! Apparently if you live in the north east of the country DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT!!!...

This is a great, easy-to-use and easy-to-install RO unit. I bought the de-ionization chamber as well and have been happy with the results. I recommend this product to others. I bought mine to reduce water hardness (it was far too high coming out of the tap), and it has brought hardness to zero in my tap water. My saltwater reef tank is doing very well, and I have seen an increase in activity among the fish and increased coral growth (xenias, clove, goniopora especially, various other SPS and LPS, etc.) despite having made no other changes. It was also cheaper for me to make my own RO/DI water than to buy water from my local fish store (more on that below). The unit isn't perfect, but it works very well. The clips that hold the side chambers onto the center unit are a bit weak and the chambers sag downward when full of water. But, they stay on the main unit, so that isn't a big deal. The unit also didn't explain how to remove the stoppers that come with the unit. The unit has a particular kind of tube seal that is not obvious: there are white baskets sitting in a hole, you push the basket down and shove the tubing into the hole, and then you pull the basket part up and clip a blue U-shaped clip on. That part was easy to figure out. How to remove the stoppers that are in the basket when the unit arrives (and how to get the tubing back out of the basket) was not obvious. If you just pull and pull and pull on the stoppers, nothing will happen. If, however, you simply push the basket down and then, while holding it down, pull the stopper out, it's really easy to remove them. Same with tubing: push the basket down, pull up on the tubing, and voila, done. The unit is also a great cost-saver. Buying water from the local fish store ranges from 25 cents to 50 cents per gallon. I can make my own water at about a 5 waste to 1 purified ratio for much less than that, even taking into account the cost of the unit, the cost of new membranes, and the cost of water/sewage (both purified and waste water). I collect the waste water in 5 gallon buckets and use them for watering plants, filling the pool, etc. Overall, I'm happy with the unit. It makes about 50 gallons a day, just like it says, and the water quality is great. I have only been using mine for a few weeks (and had to replace the de-ionization chamber, see my review on that page), but I am otherwise happy, I recommend this to others. One last word of warning: be sure that you don't put this somewhere that has high pressure. Or, if you do, make sure you buy tubing that can handle it. I put mine in the wrong place on a solar water heater and the pressure was too high: it blew a hole in the tubing I bought and leaked quite a bit. However, I just changed the tubing, reduced the pressure, and it has worked fine since.