Anyone using tap water instead of RODI w/ any success?

[FishGuy5]

After last nights' meeting, I've been thinking of doing more frequent water changes. The problem is going to the store to get the water. I'm tired of lugging the bottles weekly. I know, you're going to tell me to get a RODI unit for the home use. Before I get to that, I want to know if anyone is using tap water with good results. I live in Elk Grove. Anyone know how our water is?

 

[MrMikeB]

Elk Grove is well water. I have never tried a reef system there, but I do remember seeing nice little floaties in the glass of water when I lived there. (no, not those kinds of floaties... )

I have tried tap on a smaller system to see just how things were, and the phosphate level coming right out of the tap was in the unhealthy range for corals. I quickly paid the $125 and got the eBay special and have never looked back.

 

[kevin95695]

What Mike said. I'd run some tests on it just to see what your quality (TDS, phosphate, etc.) is for funsies. Depending on how they treat it, you could see occassional spikes in dangerous chlorine/chloramine too. From what I understand (as a noob) chlorine will exit if you "age" the water, chloramine will not. Add "Waterkeeper" to your buddy list here on RC.

 

[Brian Prestwood]

I have run my tank without DI and it worked fine. I live in Antelope, the tap water measures around 200 on a TDS meter.

 

[Reefugee]

Brian,

What is your TDS with only RO water?

Minh

 

[DrDNA]

By "tap water" do you mean the municipal water supply, as opposed to well water?
FWIW, I run my tank on well water. I don't have enough water pressure to run a RODI unit. I tested some its parameters once, it had traces of nitrates and phosphates (though PO4 tests zero and nitrates less than 5ppm in my tank), alk was like 6dKH, Ca was 40ppm, but pH is only around 6.6. I also do 15% water changes twice a month.
Hope this helps!

 

[Justin74]

FWIW the only time I saw a succesfull tank on tap was Alex's. And he was doing considerable waterchanges weekly on his 29g along with haveing insane amounts of flow (which also helped accomodate using less than desirable source water IMO).

-Justin

 

[H20Sidhe]

I used tap water for years. For the last 7 years I have been in West Sac. I have had a RO/DI for 4 months.

It really depends on what is in your tap water.

 

[shilo_1]

I agree that it depends on your tap water. I've only used a RODI unit once a few years back in MO, but never since. I've always kept reefs, and can be pretty slack about water changes. I can't say that I've ever really had too much trouble with algae growing either, and have had gret coral growth rates for what I had in the tanks. HTH

 

[DrDNA]

I guess one thing that would help is you could fill up an extra fish tank or large container with tap water and then filter it with carbon and Poly-filters. It would be kind of an "okie" version of DI, but would be better than nothing. Just a thought....

 

[kevin95695]

"well water". Your well? Or city of Elk Grove's well, further treated?

 

[DarkDevil]

if you guys going to use well/tap water, be sure you at least run it through carbon to take out as much chlorine and VOCs as possible. some small water systems(rural well, ground water) dump chlorine into their system to get the bacteria count down to pass inspections, but most of the time they are in good shape. althought you have to look out for Nitrate and Phorsphate if you live near an agriculture area, the MCL from state regulation on those are kind of high for our purposes. on the other hand, large/public water system (surface water) constantly dump chlorine into the system no matter what, sometimes even more if the bacT count is high, so becareful about it.