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  #26  
Old 12/31/2007, 01:43 PM
AZDesertRat AZDesertRat is offline
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There are exceptions to every rule. I am a treatment plant operator and supervisor by profession though and have been for almost 34 years and I will not use it in my tanks. Tap water changes day to day or even hour to hour, you never know. Say it comes a huge storm with lots of runoff; Treatment changes to meet the conditions. Or say the water main down the street gets hit by a backhoe. You know have dirty possibly contaminated water that you have no control over. Or your utility switches from free chlorine as a residual disinfectant to chloramines or chlorine dioxide. Again you never know and you have no control over it.

I am a firm believer it will catch up to you in time. Water is the single largest ingredient in our systems and one of the few things we CAN control using a simple RO or RO/DI system. Remember everything in your tank depends on that water so why risk corals of fish, even relatively inexpensive soft coral and damsels ? Most of us have way too much invested to even think about adding tap water. For $150+/- you can eliminate that worry.
  #27  
Old 12/31/2007, 05:23 PM
Ooulophilia Ooulophilia is offline
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I agree with the above post - Tap water is not inherantly bad, but it is variable. From personal experience, I knew someone who strictly used tap on his reef (he seemed to be doing it to prove a point or be stubborn, I don't know), and I guess every few years the water company flushes out the pipes by elevating or adding some chemical - I guess he did not get the memo, and lost all of his inverts.
I have acces to NSW out here, and will not use it for the same reason - it is not that it is bad, but it is variable, and as we all know consistency is the key to a succesful reef tank.
  #28  
Old 12/31/2007, 06:21 PM
FEEDERFISH FEEDERFISH is offline
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My city tap is 100-120 TDS I still run RO/DI, my filters last a long time, during the summer when street work is on I have seen my TDS bounce around and hit 195-295, but its your reef and up to you $200 is really pocket change in this hobby for a RO/DI system
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  #29  
Old 01/01/2008, 01:40 AM
rexdenton rexdenton is offline
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11 years...well tap water, living near atlantic coastline. Never have used anything else while living here. Acros, clams, you name it. Aside from the usual outbreaks of valonia, doing fine. I do minimize the addition of food=phosphate+nitrogen=not so good for the tank...Oh, I do changes *very* infrequently
  #30  
Old 01/01/2008, 02:15 AM
demonsp demonsp is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by geoxman
Although the initial post was kind of nanny nanny boo boo and it has only been going for 4 months, it can be done.

demonsp-it seems a little harsh to call the guy a liar.

Where he lives in Minnesota there might be great tap! There are a ton of spring fed lakes and it is known as the state of 10,000 lakes.

dasstheboss good luck with your tank and it looks very nice.
I didnt see where i called anyone a lire and i know its hard to understand sarcasium in text form. Ans i did state that very very few are lucky enough to have proper water (But the risk outways any other option ) for a reef tank. But if you have atleast 1 yrs experiance in a reef tank you can only see that the pic he afford was not a 3 or 2 or even a 1 yr tank pic.Unless he scrapes all glass sides and cleans all equipment evey week or so. It just looks to clean to me and this is to me a well placed guess.
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  #31  
Old 01/01/2008, 02:30 AM
demonsp demonsp is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by stevelkaneval
heres my tank its a 20 long about a year old and ive never used ro/di.

[IMG][/IMG]
[IMG][/IMG]
Sorry but you can tell. And i wouldnt use this pic for your qualified respons. And im not starting trouble so plz dont PM me upset.Its just an educated guess from a pic you thought to be a reason for tap. Sotty to say but its Unresponible reed keeping. This is a relitivly new hobby with alot of great advances recently. Alot of these coral and fish are transfered right form the ocean and they deserve a better chance then tap water. I wont even drink from my tap. If you want to base a tank with no coraline growth ( after 1 yrs) and little stock then research some more and get a good test kit.
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  #32  
Old 01/01/2008, 02:38 AM
demonsp demonsp is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by ricks
Here are a couple of pictures of our 500 gallon reef... I use unfiltered mud puddle water, has worked great for many years.

Just kidding..

If your choice is tap water more power to you. Most hard core reefers would never trust there prized reefs to tap water..

Happy Reefing


Looks like you may filter it through a used coffee filter first.LOL

Very nice sps tank you have. Looks very impressive.
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  #33  
Old 01/01/2008, 07:52 AM
Randy Holmes-Farley Randy Holmes-Farley is offline
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It isn't necessary to take an extreme position one way or the other, and it just isn't warranted. Using tap water is like not having health insurance. It is a risk. Often it works out, and folks can then claim it was a good idea. Sometimes it doesn't, and then choosing that path might look foolish.

Tap water clearly does sometimes contain things that are unacceptable (high copper from pipes, for example). Sometimes it does not. A TDS measurement is no indication of suitability with respect to copper, since even totally pure water run through copper pipes can become too high in copper.

I discuss tap water, and include real data from many city water supplies here:

Tap Water in Reef Aquaria
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/jan2004/chem.htm
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  #34  
Old 01/01/2008, 01:20 PM
GoingPostal GoingPostal is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by demonsp
But if you have atleast 1 yrs experiance in a reef tank you can only see that the pic he afford was not a 3 or 2 or even a 1 yr tank pic.Unless he scrapes all glass sides and cleans all equipment evey week or so. It just looks to clean to me and this is to me a well placed guess.
Like I said, I do weekly water changes on the tank and wipe down all the salt creep on equipment and any algea growing on the front glass, I don't touch the sides or back, you can clearly see coralline grown on the filters that is impossible to get off. It's just funny that you are telling me my tank is brand new when I know for a fact I set it up originally in Dec 04 to cycle and added my clownfish in Feb 05, my first fish is still with me amazingly enough through my newb mistakes.
Honestly that tank always looks grungy to me because the glass is really green tinted, I got the tank secondhand and it must be older than dirt. My Aquapod run off the same water is covered in coralline but it never spreads in this tank except on the equipment.

Once again, I'm not encouraging peope to use tap, just pointing out that the whole tap water=death and algea isn't always the case. I'm purchasing a ro unit before my new tank is up and running and I'll see if there's any difference then. One thing I've noticed now is I cannot keep any micro or macro algea alive, they all just fade away, my cheato is alive but falling apart and not growing but the coralline spreads great in my other two tanks but not in this one. All tanks get water changes out of the same buckets, same frequency, about 15%.

Where'd the OP go?
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  #35  
Old 01/01/2008, 02:35 PM
ricks ricks is offline
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I wasn't trying to be extreme....

Just stating that I would not use tap water in my system. Some people use tap water and posted pictures of their systems. It works for them, however there is NO possible way I could achieve an SPS system like pictures with tap water....

Some of the corals in my tank are over 5 years old, and all started from 1"-2" frags. some grow over 1"-2" a month and have been fragged many times..

I'm was just trying to show the other side of not using tap water..

Happy Reefing
  #36  
Old 01/01/2008, 03:58 PM
dasstheboss dasstheboss is offline
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Im not sure about the Tds in my water but I live in Nj and im pretty sure the TDs arent that low... i could use RO water but i first need to save up for it.
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  #37  
Old 01/01/2008, 05:42 PM
garygb garygb is offline
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Ricks, amazingly beautiful tank--the arrangement is perfect! Goingpostal, I also love your tank--those rhodactis are clearly thriving. You both are obviously offering your inhabitants what they need. I use tap water myself and do frequent (weekly or every other week) water changes. I am especially partial to anemones, and according to Joyce Wilkerson's survey several years ago, the tanks with the greatest success (survival greater than 2 years) with anemones were overwhelmingly in tanks that use tap instead of R/O. Arguably, that data is a little outdated now and with the available salts currently, I would run R/O if someone wanted to give me a unit (anybody?), but with the animals I keep (no sps) tap seems fine.
  #38  
Old 01/01/2008, 07:40 PM
geoxman geoxman is offline
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Interesting? Do you have a link to the survey? TIA
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  #39  
Old 01/01/2008, 08:41 PM
garygb garygb is offline
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Joyce Wilkerson's book, Clownfishes is where I got the info. She writes, "In the anemone survey, only 39% of total repondents used tap water as make-up water, but a whopping 83% of the anemone kept alive for 24 months or more were in those tanks. Only 14% of teh anemone kept for more than 24 months were in tanks using highly purified water from reverse osmosis, despite those representing 61% of the tanks surveyed. In a nutshell: respondents using tap water for make-up water were 6 times more liikely to maintain anemomnes for more than 24 months than those using RO water" (pg 47). She then goes on to explain possible explanations for why this may be the case.
  #40  
Old 01/01/2008, 10:03 PM
geoxman geoxman is offline
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very very very interesting! I shall try to read up on it.
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  #41  
Old 01/01/2008, 10:51 PM
garygb garygb is offline
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She has a nice section in the book on host anemones, including specific information regarding the clowns that will host in each species, the geographic distribution in the wild, and then the section from which I quoted on the subject of husbandry. It's a very good book with all you need to know on all the clowns. I'm sure you can get it on amazon.com or maybe in Barnes Noble or Borders.
  #42  
Old 01/02/2008, 01:41 PM
davenia7 davenia7 is offline
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I've been running tap in my 10 gal. for a year now. It's going well. I had just the average algae issues. Even those with RO/DI get new tank algaes, and to claim otherwise is irresponsible. However, now that my new tankness has eased off, everything is doing well.
I might mention that I live in SC and I have de-salinated RO/DI from the tap which makes it much better.
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  #43  
Old 01/02/2008, 04:30 PM
garygb garygb is offline
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On the subject of tap water, does anyone (Randy) know if a countertop water filtration system would improve the quality of tap water. I have an Aquasana 4000 which uses carbon block, cocunut shell and a potassium ion exchange filter. I've never used it for makeup water for a marine tank, but use it for drinking water. I know it is supposed to remove lead and other heavy metals using potassium as a replacement ion for these. I also understand that it doesn't remove phosphate. Would the potassium be an issue?
  #44  
Old 01/02/2008, 04:44 PM
Randy Holmes-Farley Randy Holmes-Farley is offline
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I doubt the potassium is a concern, but I am skeptical of them in general due to the small size (and hence low ion exchange capacity).
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  #45  
Old 01/02/2008, 04:44 PM
spike78 spike78 is offline
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After what I've seen build up in the foam block prefilter of my RO/DI unit, I won't be switching to tap water anytime soon.

The fact of the matter is that tap water is highly variable depending on where you live. Because one person has success with it does not equate to everyone having success.

It might also relate that the original poster stated that he did not often change water. This would limit the import and buildup of any impurities in the imported water and would reduce the risk of a negative impact from less than pure water would it not?
  #46  
Old 01/02/2008, 04:52 PM
garygb garygb is offline
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Thank you for the information. You're quick. Now I'm thinking about getting a RO unit. I've never had a problem with my tap water (Los Angeles), but some of the posts imply that the water varies constantly and so maybe I've just been lucky. I don't want to hijack this thread at all, but would someone suggest a relatively inexpensive RO that I don't have to do anything invasive to the plumbing--I'm in a rental. I think I know the answer to this next question, but just in case, is there any need for the use of a dechlorinator/dechloraminator with RO water?
  #47  
Old 01/02/2008, 05:30 PM
AZDesertRat AZDesertRat is offline
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A good portion of LA uses imported Colorado River water and its some of the highest TDS around. Phoenix uses the same water and my TDS is over 800! Hardness is high and there is a higher than normal instance of traces of rocket fuels/propellants to. RO/DI is the only way to go.
  #48  
Old 01/02/2008, 06:18 PM
garygb garygb is offline
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Yikes, rocket fuel? Do you use RO for drinking water too? Which unit do you recommend?
  #49  
Old 01/02/2008, 06:30 PM
Gooli Gooli is offline
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dasstheboss...can u test your tap water for TDS, nitrates and phosphates and post the results?
  #50  
Old 01/02/2008, 06:33 PM
AZDesertRat AZDesertRat is offline
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Yep. I have used RO for drinking since 1992. My present system is a Spectrapure MaxCap dual membrane system with a 14 gallon pressure tank.
 

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