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teach
07/31/2004, 10:46 PM
Does anyone know how bad Jacksonville tap water is? I was hoping that I could use it to start my tank and then use RO after that for water changes and evaporation. I don't have an RO unit and am having trouble convincing my husband that they are necessary. Thanks for the help.

anabolic_1
07/31/2004, 10:57 PM
I wouldn't use it to wash my car, nontheless use it in my reef. You want to use it to "start your tank" do what? Act like a septic? Then go ahead. I say no no, not south Georgia water.
Mike,

joseph
08/01/2004, 05:09 AM
I would advise against using tap water on your reef tank.

Maybe some hard facts will help you to convince your husband of just how bad the water can be.

For the 2003 JEA water quality report:

http://www.jea.com/about/pub/downloads/quality/2003WaterQualityReport.pdf

You can find out the water quality of your neighborhood.

teach
08/01/2004, 11:42 AM
Thank-you Joseph

grochmal
08/02/2004, 01:35 PM
It's funny.
I had a small 20 gallon fowlr tank that I used tap water on for everything - top off, water changes.
I had no problems at all, algae or otherwise.
Now I have a 125 gallon reef tank and use RO/DI for everything.
And I have all sorts of algae problems.
Go figure...

If you're cycling a brand new tank, I wouldn't think it would hurt using tap water for that.
But I still am a believer in using RO/DI once the tank is up and runnnig.

Just my $0.02

GatorReefman
08/07/2004, 06:32 PM
I started out my tank with the intention of making it an FOWLR and used tap water. Later. changed my mind and converted to reef and started using DI/RO water. Most of my creatures seem pretty good . I do have an red slime algae problem but I think that is related to my heavy feedings of the the tank.

Mabus
08/19/2004, 07:54 PM
I used tap water from here beaches in a 55 gal reef for over a year. Worked fine.

reelfreak
09/13/2004, 07:17 PM
I have used tap water from atlantic beach for a while now, no real problems from it....I tested plain tap water with saliferts and found 0 nitites 0 nitrates 0 ammonia...the phosphates came in at 0.1 ..... I always added amquel to remove any chlorines or chloramines......after seeing the phosphates in tap i began to use ro water.....i have not witnessed any miraculous changes, probably because the tank looked pretty good to begin with....i dont have a ton of corals though, in that case i would always start and continually use ro/di....