Who else uses tap water?

[travis32]

Well, Here's a quick story on my city's tap water.

Our gas hot water heater was leaking at the brass fittings. So I called a plumber to replace it. For a varied number of reasons we replaced with a smaller electric water heater. The plumber had issues getting the old pipes off and had to cut them because they were so rusted into the water heater's fittings.

Less than 1 year later, our brand new water heater quit working. I called the same installer, he checked it out. The water had rusted the top and bottom heating elements and made contact with the actual electrical parts.

In less than a year, the water had damaged the thermostats. He had to replace 3 or 4 thermostats, 2 heating elements, and basiclly rebuilt the water heater. The parts were under warranty thankfully or we could have had to just buy a new water heater again!

He said that if we don't install a softner soon, we will be replacing the heater every 1 to 2 years. So we called culligan had a softner / Ro unit put in. They said the salt is still hard on the heaters, but, it should last around 5 - 6 years instead of 1 - 2 years.

that's how horrible our city water. With a TDS of 620. I I'd rather drink water that I know fish have been peeing and pooping in than our city tap water. Plus the taste is horrible.

I tested it with a couple people. Had them take a sip of the city water and then a sip of the RO water. They couldn't believe the amount of difference in just flavor / taste.

I realize different cities are different and we do have a city referendum in the next year asking for more tax money to improve the water treatment plant. I don't know what it is, but, it's horrible. I'm surprised the RO gets it down to 25 TDS!

Culligan told us doing the Ro without the softner, would cause the membranes to be replaced every 1- 2 years. With the softner, they should lsat 5 - 7 years. Not sure they meant it to be used for 5 gallon top offs every week and 10 - 20 gallon water changes. But, hey...

 

[chris88]

Do me a favour and check out my tank in this link. never used anythign but tap and i think you will be take back what you said.

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=445072475&blogId=538589979

i service tanks for my LFS and i have seen what happens with tap water . it is possable but i have never seen a tank that uses tap water look stunning in any way . use the right water and you will see results much,much better than conditioned tap water .
however you can get away with it in a fowlr tank or if you run out of RO/DI in a pinch but not as a consistent procedure for proper tank maintenance .

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

you have a really nice aquarium, Chris.

I'm still not going to take back anything I posted- instead I'll go even further:
water municipalities put things into our public water sources to kill living organisms. Tapwater varies greatly from locale to locale. Tapwater varies daily without our knowledge (unless you monitor it with a TDS meter.)
Every time I place some intense lighting above an aquarium containing saltwater made with tap I end up with a huge bloom of algae.

It doesn't happen with RO.

 

[Durbelethwen]

I do not know if this counts but I have been using tap water in my freshwater tank for two years and my mom has been using water from the same water system for almost thirty years without any trouble that we could see. My mom says that our water is not treated with anything like: chloride, fluoride, or any water softeners.
I plan on using tap water when I get my salt water aquarium set up.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

I do not know if this counts but I have been using tap water in my freshwater tank for two years and my mom has been using water from the same water system for almost thirty years without any trouble that we could see. My mom says that our water is not treated with anything like: chloride, fluoride, or any water softeners.
I plan on using tap water when I get my salt water aquarium set up.

tap is great for growing freshwater and marine plants. Ditto with growing algae.

 

[allsps40]

I have used tap water for over two years now with fowlr and heavy reef tanks (softies, leathers, LPS, SPS, and sensitive inverts) with no illeffects. *knock on wood*

You use the mesa tap water on sps tanks. Wow you are brave. I wouldnt. I have a ro unit.

 

[iamwrasseman]

cris ,your tank indeed looks great and i would not change a thing but in general ro/di is the way to go in order to lessen maintenance and nuisance algae . needless to say there are many other advantages using ro but that's another story . i also see that you have a very light bio load in your tank and that is definitely helping out your specific situation .
nice tank my friend ~

 

[chris88]

I get what your saying and i mentioned in the past post that i would use ro if i had a unit set up in my house. All i can say is that is works for me and i am not going to change it until i have a reason to. I overfeed on purpose because my nutrients are so low i can't grow any algae at all to keep snails happy and sometimes low nutrients can cause sps to go pale. For a bio load i have the following. yellow tang, 3 damsels, 3 zebra barred gobies, 2 tomatoe clowns, 2 blue chromis, various snails and hermits, and one peppermint shirmp. I don't really think that its a low bio load for a 50g tank with a 20g sump.

 

[Nebthet]

I use tapwater myself for my tank. Yes I have algae, but I think buy and large that is my fault for overfeeding my tank. I keep a mixed reef with sps, lps, and some softies, clams and anemones.

I have found there is a balance in the maintenance you do in your tank and any undesireable algae growth happening and the health of the corals.
For my tank, I found the more water changes I was doing (like the weekly 10%) the more algae I had and the worse the corals were looking.

Now I do a 10% water change once a month and do daily top offs, and add magnesium, calcium, alkalinity, coral accel additives once a week with a top off.

In that time I have seen the green hair algae decreased, zoas looking much brighter and growing like crazy, sps much happier and growing nicely. Xenia is beginning to grow and spread, acans love my tank. Clams are happy as are the anemones. I have even been bringing back to health a very bleached sebae.

I think once you find that balance in your tanks bioload vs the water you are using you are gonna be successful. I have seen people who use RODI units have just as many, if not more issues than some of us who use tapwater.

 

[Gangous]

My tank had bad alge till I got an rodi unit

 

[thelostrican]

ro/di all the way here my house tds is 250 or so....i like to know what goes in my reef to much $$$ invested to take a chance....to each its own...

 

[Idle Moor]

I have well water that is incredibly hard (central Maryland - this entire half of the state is made from limestone) and for years I used an RO unit because the person who had the house and tank before me did. He said he put it in to remove phospates due to fertilizer and cow poop runoff. But I thought about the logic of removing all that calcium only to replace it using a calcium reactor and shut the RO unit off. No major problems with algae ensued. I have a fowlr now and also a water softener which I bypass for topoff and water changes.

 

[chadfarmer]

out of the tap it 600 tds were i live no tap water

 

[Jstdv8]

when my Ro filters got old my TDS got up around 62, my TDS from my well is 270, when I was addingt he 62 too my tank I got solid Cyano. I can't imagine how anyone can succesfully use full blown tap water with any kind of luck without havinga small fortune into filtering devices on the tank to get that crap outta there.

 

[zaheda]

I was also using tap water lately as my ro unit at my mom house. The tds at home with the ro unit was 42, and this was used for drinking water and my reef tank. Since me got married I was sent ro water now and again and than used also quite3 a bit of tap water. Well the tank was doing just great. A month back I got a ro unit with di, hooked it up at my place and was than using it. I thought well my tank will even run better with this but I was wrong. I started getting weird algae in the first week and till now not sorted out. Im questioning if the ro unit can be the problem.

 

[Paul B]

I used tap water in my reef for the first 15 years or so with no problems. 5 or 6 years of that was New York City water which is some of the best water in the US due to the 100 year old cobblestone water tunnels. Then I moved the tank to Long Island where we have well water and the various towns treat their water differently. One day I changed 20 gallons of water and in an instant almost all of the corals died.
I called the water company and they told me they added zinc orthophosphate to the water supply to prevent corrosion in the pipes. It does not hurt humans but it kills corals very fast depending on how far from your home they add the chemical and how much they need to add.
I installed a RO/DI and a few years later when the resins were probably almost exhausted, it happened again. Enough got through my RO to kill many of the corals. Now I make sure my resins are up to date and I have an extra resin chamber on the tank as a final check. If those resins change color, I know my main resins are exhausted.
So some tap water is fine, some times, but not all the time.

 

[gregmoeck]

tap water = hair algae in this part of the country. I have to use RO

 

[lordofthereef]

It would put more value to this thread if the people saying they use hard water and high pH from the tap for who knows how many years actually added some pics of their system. Sure it might be keeping something alive, but is it thriving and pretty to look at? IMO RO water is one of the lowest expenses we have in the hobby, especially if you get smart with recycling your waste water.

 

[Mish1]

RO/DI user here. My tap water comes out at an avergae TDS of 460 and I have seen spikes where it goes 600+. I am not putting that in my aquarium.

 

[Paul B]

It would put more value to this thread if the people saying they use hard water and high pH from the tap for who knows how many years actually added some pics of their system.

Tap water circa 1972, it ran for about 15 years like that.
The reef is still running but now I don't use tap water.