Tap water for Saltwater?

Hi,

I have read many places that say not to use tap water when making saltwater. Has anyone ever had bad results doing this? I mean what am I suppost to do buy 50 gallons of bottled water or those over priced premade saltwater from my LFS?

 

Many LFS sell RO water at a reasonable price. I used Tap water to fill my 120g FOWLR tank but use RO water to replace evaporation loss. I have had no problems doing this. I would not recommend this for a reef tank. I strickly use RO water in my reef tank and have my own RO system producing over 25g per day. Tap water quality varies from city to city. You have to know the water quality of your area, some water contains heavy metals, copper, nitrates, ect.. If you do use tap water use high quality carbon and a heavy metal absorbing resin such as purigen or cuprisorb by seachem. I would aslo test the water for phosphates and use a phosoban or some other resin. You may also want to consider using Red Sea's salt called Reef Crystal's which they claim has a heavy metal binding agent. The best thing to do however would be to use RO water.

 

You could steal the Ro water from your school's chem lab like someone I know...

 

o but fist make sure it water and not acid...almost melted my fish once

 

Buy an RO/DI  unit and make your own water from tap water.  I got mine here

www.airwaterice.com

I have the regular Typhoon.

If you are planning on a reef tank, I would invest in the highest quality of water.

 

ROs are worth the investment. Some people are lucky and have good tap water though... I know that Craig Manuikian has tested his tap a lot and have never had more than 50 TDS which is good - a lot of water you get out of the 5 gallon dispensors in offices is at 50 TDS. But with my R.O., I get 0 TDS (total dissolved solids).

 

I just bought a RO unit off of Ebay for $97.00 including shipping. 6 stage 100 gpg there is absolutely no reason to purchase RO water from a LFS, when you can buy your own unit for that kind of money.

Sean

 

Wow!! 50 tds out of tap water is really low...I wish. Here in SoCal it's around 580-620 out of the tap. If I keep my filters changed I get 0-20 consistently. RO is the way to go. Even if you didn't get the DI unit it would be better to use at least an RO unit. ME salts claims to have the same thinf that Red Sea does, a de-chlorinator and a heavy metals binding agent but I don't trust it. I use their ME two part and RO/DI water for the reef.

I've been using tap for my FW tanks and so far (many, many years) and have not run into a problem. I do de-chlorinate and set the ph 'cause the tap around here is high ph (8.8 or so).

Drew