So you say tap water is no good? Hmm..
- Thread starter dasstheboss
- Start date
sohaltangs
New member
WOW. now thats a beautiful tank!! :bigeyes:
GoingPostal
Active member
Good thing I'm not a "hardcore" reefer than. I have no desire to keep sps and have to worry about my tank, I know it'll weather a disaster or me leaving some one else in charge for week. Like I said, I take the lazy approach. I add water daily and do water changes weekly, other than that the tank handles itself with no fancy equipment.
CWebHokie
New member
Hahah!!! Awesome...
No seriously, you can have some (or even a lot of) luck with tap water. I personally have 75 TDS water and used it for a while (~2 years) with some success and some problems. (hair algae, general coral unhappiness). I have since switched to RODI (almost 1 year) & my tank has had a much higher success rate. The only way to know exactly what is going into your tank is to use an RODI and strip the H2O down to 0 TDS and build it back up with supplements. It is possible that in some areas tap water has the perfect chemistry for use in a saltwater tank, but I am not willing to risk it. At least at 0 TDS, you know what is there, nothing... Good luck though with the tap water, I'm interested to see the progress.
miwoodar
Likey the bikey
If you play with fire you could get burned. Your water could be fine but why would you take the chance? I used tap water for years before buying an RO/DI set up. The first city I lived in was OK (not great, but I was too much of a rookie to realize it). The second city was terrible.
Your tank is off to a great start (no joke) but I agree with the other folks - four months is too early to claim success. With the money and time you have already invested in your tank, you should buy an RO/DI just to be safe. The road to nursing a tank back to health after it runs amuck is agony and can take a year or more. I had to go through it and I almost dropped the hobby before things came back into line.
Your tank is off to a great start (no joke) but I agree with the other folks - four months is too early to claim success. With the money and time you have already invested in your tank, you should buy an RO/DI just to be safe. The road to nursing a tank back to health after it runs amuck is agony and can take a year or more. I had to go through it and I almost dropped the hobby before things came back into line.
AZDesertRat
In Memoriam
There are exceptions to every rule. I am a treatment plant operator and supervisor by profession though and have been for almost 34 years and I will not use it in my tanks. Tap water changes day to day or even hour to hour, you never know. Say it comes a huge storm with lots of runoff; Treatment changes to meet the conditions. Or say the water main down the street gets hit by a backhoe. You know have dirty possibly contaminated water that you have no control over. Or your utility switches from free chlorine as a residual disinfectant to chloramines or chlorine dioxide. Again you never know and you have no control over it.
I am a firm believer it will catch up to you in time. Water is the single largest ingredient in our systems and one of the few things we CAN control using a simple RO or RO/DI system. Remember everything in your tank depends on that water so why risk corals of fish, even relatively inexpensive soft coral and damsels ? Most of us have way too much invested to even think about adding tap water. For $150+/- you can eliminate that worry.
I am a firm believer it will catch up to you in time. Water is the single largest ingredient in our systems and one of the few things we CAN control using a simple RO or RO/DI system. Remember everything in your tank depends on that water so why risk corals of fish, even relatively inexpensive soft coral and damsels ? Most of us have way too much invested to even think about adding tap water. For $150+/- you can eliminate that worry.
Ooulophilia
New member
I agree with the above post - Tap water is not inherantly bad, but it is variable. From personal experience, I knew someone who strictly used tap on his reef (he seemed to be doing it to prove a point or be stubborn, I don't know), and I guess every few years the water company flushes out the pipes by elevating or adding some chemical - I guess he did not get the memo, and lost all of his inverts.
I have acces to NSW out here, and will not use it for the same reason - it is not that it is bad, but it is variable, and as we all know consistency is the key to a succesful reef tank.
I have acces to NSW out here, and will not use it for the same reason - it is not that it is bad, but it is variable, and as we all know consistency is the key to a succesful reef tank.
FEEDERFISH
Active member
My city tap is 100-120 TDS I still run RO/DI, my filters last a long time, during the summer when street work is on I have seen my TDS bounce around and hit 195-295, but its your reef and up to you $200 is really pocket change in this hobby for a RO/DI system
11 years...well tap water, living near atlantic coastline. Never have used anything else while living here. Acros, clams, you name it. Aside from the usual outbreaks of valonia, doing fine. I do minimize the addition of food=phosphate+nitrogen=not so good for the tank...Oh, I do changes *very* infrequently
demonsp
In Memoriam
I didnt see where i called anyone a lire and i know its hard to understand sarcasium in text form. Ans i did state that very very few are lucky enough to have proper water (But the risk outways any other option ) for a reef tank. But if you have atleast 1 yrs experiance in a reef tank you can only see that the pic he afford was not a 3 or 2 or even a 1 yr tank pic.Unless he scrapes all glass sides and cleans all equipment evey week or so. It just looks to clean to me and this is to me a well placed guess.
demonsp
In Memoriam
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11486759#post11486759 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by stevelkaneval
heres my tank its a 20 long about a year old and ive never used ro/di.
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Sorry but you can tell. And i wouldnt use this pic for your qualified respons. And im not starting trouble so plz dont PM me upset.Its just an educated guess from a pic you thought to be a reason for tap. Sotty to say but its Unresponible reed keeping. This is a relitivly new hobby with alot of great advances recently. Alot of these coral and fish are transfered right form the ocean and they deserve a better chance then tap water. I wont even drink from my tap. If you want to base a tank with no coraline growth ( after 1 yrs) and little stock then research some more and get a good test kit.
demonsp
In Memoriam
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11489134#post11489134 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ricks
Here are a couple of pictures of our 500 gallon reef... I use unfiltered mud puddle water, has worked great for many years.
Just kidding..
If your choice is tap water more power to you. Most hard core reefers would never trust there prized reefs to tap water..
Happy Reefing
Looks like you may filter it through a used coffee filter first.LOL
Very nice sps tank you have. Looks very impressive.
It isn't necessary to take an extreme position one way or the other, and it just isn't warranted. Using tap water is like not having health insurance. It is a risk. Often it works out, and folks can then claim it was a good idea. Sometimes it doesn't, and then choosing that path might look foolish.
Tap water clearly does sometimes contain things that are unacceptable (high copper from pipes, for example). Sometimes it does not. A TDS measurement is no indication of suitability with respect to copper, since even totally pure water run through copper pipes can become too high in copper.
I discuss tap water, and include real data from many city water supplies here:
Tap Water in Reef Aquaria
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/jan2004/chem.htm
Tap water clearly does sometimes contain things that are unacceptable (high copper from pipes, for example). Sometimes it does not. A TDS measurement is no indication of suitability with respect to copper, since even totally pure water run through copper pipes can become too high in copper.
I discuss tap water, and include real data from many city water supplies here:
Tap Water in Reef Aquaria
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/jan2004/chem.htm
GoingPostal
Active member
Like I said, I do weekly water changes on the tank and wipe down all the salt creep on equipment and any algea growing on the front glass, I don't touch the sides or back, you can clearly see coralline grown on the filters that is impossible to get off. It's just funny that you are telling me my tank is brand new when I know for a fact I set it up originally in Dec 04 to cycle and added my clownfish in Feb 05, my first fish is still with me amazingly enough through my newb mistakes.
Honestly that tank always looks grungy to me because the glass is really green tinted, I got the tank secondhand and it must be older than dirt. My Aquapod run off the same water is covered in coralline but it never spreads in this tank except on the equipment.
Once again, I'm not encouraging peope to use tap, just pointing out that the whole tap water=death and algea isn't always the case. I'm purchasing a ro unit before my new tank is up and running and I'll see if there's any difference then. One thing I've noticed now is I cannot keep any micro or macro algea alive, they all just fade away, my cheato is alive but falling apart and not growing but the coralline spreads great in my other two tanks but not in this one. All tanks get water changes out of the same buckets, same frequency, about 15%.
Where'd the OP go?
I wasn't trying to be extreme....
Just stating that I would not use tap water in my system. Some people use tap water and posted pictures of their systems. It works for them, however there is NO possible way I could achieve an SPS system like pictures with tap water....
Some of the corals in my tank are over 5 years old, and all started from 1"-2" frags. some grow over 1"-2" a month and have been fragged many times..
I'm was just trying to show the other side of not using tap water..
Happy Reefing
Just stating that I would not use tap water in my system. Some people use tap water and posted pictures of their systems. It works for them, however there is NO possible way I could achieve an SPS system like pictures with tap water....
Some of the corals in my tank are over 5 years old, and all started from 1"-2" frags. some grow over 1"-2" a month and have been fragged many times..
I'm was just trying to show the other side of not using tap water..
Happy Reefing
dasstheboss
New member
Im not sure about the Tds in my water but I live in Nj and im pretty sure the TDs arent that low... i could use RO water but i first need to save up for it.
Ricks, amazingly beautiful tank--the arrangement is perfect! Goingpostal, I also love your tank--those rhodactis are clearly thriving. You both are obviously offering your inhabitants what they need. I use tap water myself and do frequent (weekly or every other week) water changes. I am especially partial to anemones, and according to Joyce Wilkerson's survey several years ago, the tanks with the greatest success (survival greater than 2 years) with anemones were overwhelmingly in tanks that use tap instead of R/O. Arguably, that data is a little outdated now and with the available salts currently, I would run R/O if someone wanted to give me a unit (anybody?), but with the animals I keep (no sps) tap seems fine.
Joyce Wilkerson's book, Clownfishes is where I got the info. She writes, "In the anemone survey, only 39% of total repondents used tap water as make-up water, but a whopping 83% of the anemone kept alive for 24 months or more were in those tanks. Only 14% of teh anemone kept for more than 24 months were in tanks using highly purified water from reverse osmosis, despite those representing 61% of the tanks surveyed. In a nutshell: respondents using tap water for make-up water were 6 times more liikely to maintain anemomnes for more than 24 months than those using RO water" (pg 47). She then goes on to explain possible explanations for why this may be the case.
