LFS's water quality

lunatik_69 · 04-10-2008, 04:24 AM

Has anyone ever wondered how "good" your LFS's water is? Have you ever tested the water to see if its better than yours? I recently tested the NO3 level at one of my lfs and was surprised to find that he had his coral tank at 90ppm. All his corals looked great. I didnt get the chance to test for anything else, but will do so when I get the chance again. Just curious if anybody has done this.

Tangster · 04-10-2008, 04:50 AM

Yes well some shops are just slack and then again its not really fair to the LFS in that you have to remember these are working systems and not a simple home aquarium .. The amount of animals that come through and are kept plus the people in shops when the feed they just toss it in and most LFS don't do water changes and or bother with NO3 controls .. I know that when I am at our facility 3 times a week I do water quality test and I keep our systems at 0 NO3's and PO4's and Cal and DKH at levels any LFS would not bother with.. But we grow our corals for commercial wholesale to LFS and after they buy and pay for them I really don't care what happens to the corals or systems . Thats their baby to rock not mine..

But its not accurate to try and compare a LFS water quality to your home aquarium its a working system not pleasure and NO3 are not all that deadly test have shown that 80ppm is seldom harmful to most marine fish and 10 ppm or so is O.K for a reef system . I myself shoot for Zero with either of them but its not easy to do But I feel I have to to produce the best quality corals ..
I run denitrater coils and I dare say no LFS do.. We run PO4 reactors and not many LFS will .When you are in our case dealing with 4,000 gallons of water it takes a lot of ferric oxide and work . But I'd sugguest that all check the water ther animals are packed in from a LFS to try that with a online supplier is not fair as they animals has beenin a very small amount of bagged up water and the chemicial content of the water has really changed during the shippment plus the compressed oxygen in the bags can make bad water appear better also .