Hopefully this thread will remain positive, I'm more curious to hear if people have had success using something like Prime with tap water vs. RO water. I have used RO/DI water in the past with complete success, so I would stick to what I know. This is just to see if it's even a plausible option for a saltwater aquarium.
Conditioning Tap Water
- Thread starter zak.payne
- Start date
jam.jo
New member
Tap water is okay for freshwater although RO/DI is best. For reef tanks- always use RO/DI. This will take out the chloramines if you have a 5 stage if your water treatment facility uses chloramines. It also removes phosphate in tap water which can cause a lot of algae issues and remove unwanted minerals from the water. You will want to use a good salt mix like HW reefer salt to put back in the necessary elements.
disc1
-RT * ln(k)
This isn't a topic where you can run on the anecdotes of others unless you have the same water from their same tap. Even if you find ten thousand people who are running fine on their tap water, it doesn't mean squat about how it will work for you.
It's like asking if you can get away without having flood insurance. It depends entirely on where you live. I'm fine, the river would have to be up by 100ft or more to flood my house. Ain't never gonna happen. But my friend that lives down by the river would do well not to think he can eschew flood insurance just because I've never needed it.
It's like asking if you can get away without having flood insurance. It depends entirely on where you live. I'm fine, the river would have to be up by 100ft or more to flood my house. Ain't never gonna happen. But my friend that lives down by the river would do well not to think he can eschew flood insurance just because I've never needed it.
LQT
Active member
All Prime does is neutralize chlorine and chloramine and detoxify ammonia. It does nothing remove TDS... unwanted nutrients and chemicals. You will still get nuisance algae as the nutrients build up over time by using source water just treated with Prime as opposed to using RO/DI water where all impurities are removed.
There's one in every group.
disc1
-RT * ln(k)
What do you mean? There's at least one person in every group who is at least honest about the uselessness of the information that comes from a question like this? There's at least one person on every group that has some sense?
Do you really think that the results someone has with their tap water two states away from you has any bearing on how well your water will do? Do you really believe all tap water is the same?
billdogg
Well-known member
^^^What he said^^^
Unless you can compare tanks from the exact same source water, one using tap and one using ro/di, there really isn't anything meaningful to be learned.
My experience is as follows:
For ~22 years, I used Columbus, Ohio tap water with no conditioner of any sort. I would fill my mixing barrel after water changes and then it would sit and naturally off-gas the chlorine in the water until the next top-off, usually a couple days later. 2 days before water changes, I would top off the barrel and get salt mixing (IO, IORC, whatever was on sale).
I never had any problems that I could attribute to the tap water, but there were certainly seasonal problems with algae, nitrates and phosphates.
About 8 years ago, I decided, after reading here and elsewhere of the benefits, to make the switch to ro/di. Part of that was the desire to keep more demanding corals, part of that was - well - just because everybody else was.
I haven't looked back once or regretted that decision in the least. My nuisance algae/nitrate/phosphate issues went away. Turns out the likely culprit was runoff after summer storms being passed down the line. I can now keep pretty much any coral I want without much trouble. I even ran a line from the RO side up to my refrigerator for water and ice. No more $35 fridge filters!!!
That, however, was my experience. Yours may very well be different if you have a different water supplier.
hth
anthonys51
New member
can you use tap water. sure you can, people did it for years, but this hobby is such an expensive hobby what are you really saying by not using an rodi unit.
Stolireef
Active member
And, to a degree, I agree with this. When you consider that the water is literally the most important ingredient in your reef and that a decent RO/DI system is relatively inexpensive compared to other part of the hobby, why wouldn't you go the RO/DI route?
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