How's are water?

[Kabong]

How is are water? Tap that is, Any one useing tap water with just prime or equivelent in there tanks? Or does everyone use a filtration system?

[IslandReefer]

Victoria city water, in Fairfield, where,I live has between apx. 12 and 25 ppm (measured with ppm pen)depending on the time of year. Steve, out in Colwood , says he does a little better, so if your Brentwood water from similar sources, it should be close to us.
I take it you don't have a RO/DI set-up. Even with reasonably good ppm tap water, most of the time, it's quality varies with the season. More importantly, at certain times of the year, there is large amount of particulate organic matter ( from winter run-off ?).
RO/DI maybe overkill here, but it is the only way to get consistant high quality water.
Also a basic RO/DI from Aqua-safe is not that expensive (relative to anything else in the hobby) and peace-of-mind is Priceless!! :smile:
Good Reefing

[StirCrazy]

How is are water? Tap that is, Any one useing tap water with just prime or equivelent in there tanks? Or does everyone use a filtration system?

our water is good but not good enuf :mrgreen:
I have seen older neighborhoods as high as 150ppm and some with 17ppm so it really depends on your pipes in your neighborhood and house.

several people have use tap water here and had algae problems that went away after the went to ro water.

Steve

[JohnM99]

Also, the local water is treated with chloramines, rather than chlorine - chlorine evaporates easily, chloramines don't.

And, if you have an RO DI system, it is easy to turn it into an auto-top-off system - that is maybe the most labour-saving of all devices I have in my toybox.

As mentioned, you can buy an Aqua Safe system (find it on eBay, comes from N. Vancouver) - very cheap, quite easy to install.

[Jaws]

I ran my tank using RO water for months and then I used one 5G bucket of tap water for an emergency once and within 24 hours there was algae starting to grow everywhere. RO water is definately worth the money whether it's from a grocery store or if you buy the filter.