I used tap water and prime for 5 years, during that time I had two crashes, minimal coral growth more losses than gains, regular cyano outbreaks etc. Changed two things only kept existing flow, cheato, filtration,skimmer etc and rock formation and decided to go back to RODI ( which I had one a former tank in a former residence) bought it on ebay for $100 5 stage, no issues since had ti for a year now and excellent coral growth. I wish I could say it was all down to the RODI but I also discovered my lighting par was in the toilet at the same time so I had to change my little two, but the combination of the two solved all my problems. I do get some algae on my glass but I put that down to light coming from my window and I tend to have my lighting bright for long sessions. IMO rodi is a no brainer, all the best tanks I've seen in the lower mainland use RODI's far outweighing those that don't. Best of luck to you

Our water in the gvrd has almost no dissolved solids, even discus breeders need to harden the water a tiny bit.

I do not believe there is any reason for rodi water. Buy an inexpensive deionizing filter to polish your water. Our water has chloramine I believe, you can remove that with prime or the DI filter.
On the bright side if you do go with rodi filters your membranes should last a very long time as there are no carbonates or bicarbonate to remove

I 2nd this. Never got to replace my carbon. Been over 3 years. But the filter u need to every year for me.

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Deionizing resins can be recharged at home fairly easy.
You do suffer a small loss but you can buy replacement resin to keep your media level topped up. Repla e your carbon and you'll be good to go

Chloramine is not used in treatment in metro vancouver. They use UV, Ozone and Chlorine. Aging and aerating the water will remove any chlorine

http://www.metrovancouver.org/servic...s/default.aspx

Due to a combination of things in my personal life I ended up using tap water for just over a year while it has not caused any harm to my corals or fish per se I have had a constant battle with Cyano I am in the process of switching back to RODI water now

I started using tap water back in 2016, after talking to Denis at Golds who had started using tap water. He had got me into using RO water way back when I started doing salt water.
I have found that I don't have any algae issues, but then again my tank has been pretty consistent for a while (*knock on wood*). All my fish seem to be the same, and my coral looks happy and grows (other then when my French decides to take a nibble here and there).

Hello

I'd recommend to go for a proper RO/DI. I tried tap, tap with DI, RO/DI in GVRD and can say tap with DI isn't sufficient.

Titus

Im in Calgary and I have always used tap water.

Hey, I am not the most experienced reefer but I do run an sps dominant tank. Sps are very $$$ I would either buy rodi water from jl or find a way to make rodi work.