Tap water 1st time apprehensive....making my own water

[simonfrost681]

Hello All,
This is my first post although I come here often after googling questions, today I signed up,,,great forum.
Had a question:
I usually buy my saltwater at the LFS, today after reading that Arlington,TX was ranked #1 in nation for water quality, and I have a product called "API Marine stress coat makes tap water safe" I decided to mix my own. Eventually buying a ro/di setup , and so I also had oceanics salt mix bag.
I mixed the API Marine stress coat, and 2.5 cups of oceanic salt in a 5 gallon jug and stirred. I am going to wait 4 days and then do all tests with the reefmaster and salt master test kits, chk salinity . And then I was thinking of doing a 5 gallon water change into a 32 gallon biocube. I am worried because I don't think the tests test for metals or many other things. Not sure why I am going to try , except that I want to try mixing my own water. Is this a horrible idea? Or not a big deal? Not planning to do it until 72 hours.Thank you,


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[ThRoewer]

Tap water is unsuitable for reef tanks no matter how well it is ranked as drinking water.
What you want for a reef tank is pure H2O with as little impurities as possible.
Using tap water for a reef tank will cause you all kinds of problems. The only instance where I can see it being used is for quarantine tanks. Though even there I would rather use water from the display when doing water changes.

 

[simonfrost681]

What kind of problems?

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[Krchfam]

Main reason I moved to RoDI was because the water conditioner will make your skimmer go
Nuts for days. . . Not to mention all the other TDS in tap
Water. Get the RODI system, it's a must have.


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[simonfrost681]

Ok thank you both

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[ThRoewer]

Cyanobacteria, diatomea, and all kinds of other slime "algae".
Tapwater contains minerals and nutrients that might be fine or even beneficial to humans but in a reef tank can fuel the growth of many things you don't even want in a fish only tank. And if you plan on keeping corals using tapwater is a sure way to set yourself up for failure.

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[CoralsAddiction]

The only instance where I can see it being used is for quarantine tanks. Though even there I would rather use water from the display when doing water changes.

My old home tap water TDS reading used to be 580. New home, new area is 60. I still prefer to use RODI water even in QT. Some top offs in QT with tap water but most of the time I use a mix of DT/NSW when setting up QT.
No tap water in DT.