Water Quality on Iron range? (Hibbing)

Hey guys, relatively new here. Just moved to Hibbing from Georgia where I owned my own saltwater reef store. I have a very good understanding of the hobby.

With that said, I visited a local fish store today, and the owner talked to me a bit about the drawbacks to the iron and metal laden water up here. He almost hinted that a thriving SPS tank is nearly impossible. Is it as bad as he made it out to be? I run a 5 stage RO/DI and I have noticed my filters turning orange very quickly. The in TDS is about 60 and the output so far is 0. I will be running a reactor with GFO to contol phosphates, as well as a carbon reactor and an oversized capable skimmer.

Any input or advice? Kinda worried at this point. I'd like to keep mainly Acropora, so I need flawless water.

Thanks in advance and excited to be a part of the community!

I'm not sure of anyone close enough to you to comment on water quality actually, other than Brad and hopefully, he'll chime in. I think he hangs out mostly at www.lsmac.org (Duluth area club) now that they've organized. The Duluth crowd is crazy friendly and we join forces with them from time to time on events and such.  Anyway, Brad has several tanks and at least one of them has SPS in it.  He's from "da range". I can say that cuz I grew up there too.

This club is spread out and we have one or two members in many northern cities.  Bemidji has the highest concentration of reefers but not all the Bemidjians post on the forum.  

I imagine the iron is hard on the filters but it seems you'd probably just have to change them more often and it wouldn't be impossible.  A good person to ask would be Jim from The Filter Guys.  He's in the Duluth area and he specializes in matters such as these.  http://thefilterguys.biz/

Welcome to the forum!

By the way, I've seen some pretty nice SPS tanks in Duluth and Grand Rapids so they're not terribly far from you!

My self I live in the older section of Grand Forks, ND. Were our main is old cast Iron and the tails trailed to homes is 3/4" copper pipe straight out of the tap it runs 128 ppm. And years and years ago I use to change my Sediment filters every other month my carbon 3 month's, DI around 4 -5 month's and I was lucky if I could get a little over a year on my RO membrane. and my goal was to never let my TDS's go over 3 ppm.
Now I run a 5 stage Optima from www.purelyh2o.com with a Booster pump I run my home on a 20" Sediment 5 micron then to my RO/DI filtration and I run a 1 micron sediment,1 micron Carbon block,1 Micron ChlorPlus Chloramine Removal Carbon Block Filter, 90 GPD membrane Then DI at 68psi.
and now I change my sediment about every 4-5 month's mainly to keep my carbon block from exhausting out quickly, Carbon block about every 6 month's, Chloramine about 8-9 month's, DI 9+ month's and I'm going on 2 1/2 years on my membrane, and if I wasn't anal I could possible run my filters longer but I like running 0 TDS.

Thanks for the replies guys. In addition to your help, I also talked to the BRS guys where I bought my filters and they said I'm going to have to change my sediment filter as well as my DI resin pretty much constantly to stay at 0 TDS. This is OK, as I simply can't stop reefing, it's in my blood!

Hmmm, granted I do not keep much sps, not my thing but I ran my tanks on tap water up until 2-3 years ago and never had a problem. I am not as good about changing my ro di filters like I should but usually 6-9 months I change out everything but the membrane. Never seen the tds over 1 doing that.