awohld

My water in my area is really hard, and I don't want to burn through RO/DI filters.

Does anyone collect rainwater off of their roof? Are there too many chemicals leeched out of there to make a difference?

HeyPK

I do, because my tapwater is loaded with sodium bicarbonate and has essentially no calcium and magnesium. I have no rain gutter, and I have a couple of plastic trash cans located at a corner where the runoff is concentrated. If it is just a light rain, and, if it hasn't rained in a while, the water that comes off is dirty and somewhat foamy. If there was something really bad in that water, I suppose it would kill the grass, and I have never seen that. Just the same, I don't use that water. When there is a larger amount of rain, I throw out the initial, dirty water and keep the cleaner water that comes off later. I have had no problems with it.

In the summer you don't want to leave the water standing in the trash cans and breed mosquitoes. Dump out what you do not immediately collect.

Scrimp

I use to do it too and then let the water sit so i could breed the mosquitoes, then strain out the water and feed them to my fishes they loved them. Though I only used small containers not large ones as that would send up a swarm around my home. Or i put guppies in the tank so they would eat some too and I would just scoop out what I needed

snapshooter

I have used rainwater for years, but recently moved to another house and have just one 100 gallon barrel going at the moment. My old system consisted of five 55 gallon barrells daisy chained together with the overflow at the end. I siphoned the water into the basement barrells with a python. I'd put a net on the end and collect the mosquitos to feed the fish. I did use 350 magnums with micron filters overnight before using. The worst barrells are the white ones though, as they would go green quickly.

At that time, I had 30 tanks of SA species which spawned and survived quite well using the rain barrell collection method.

I did buy a 5 stage 100 gpd RO system, but I just don't have the stomach for wasting so much water and have never hooked it up.