RO Water vs Tap Water (Edmonton)

[Aquattro]

Well here's the thing. Lots of people use tap water and get away with it, with some degree of success. We measure success in reef tanks generally by the growth of the corals. My tank, for instance, now has thousands of dollars worth of successful coral growth and color...

Now what if something happens to suddenly contaminate my water supply? Cracked main taking in sewage or toxins? Contaminated tap water for a 40% water change could potentially wipe out my entire tank of coral. That would effectively end my participation in the hobby, forcing me to sell all my gear for next to nothing because I'm so depressed looking at the empty dead tank. I would lose thousands of dollars and it would take months to part it all out. THAT would be a waste of time and money.
Spending $200 or less on a RO unit could avoid the scenario above. To me, it seems like a pretty good insurance policy.

Will conditioned tap water work? Yup. Will it work every single time for the duration of my keeping a reef tank? Don't know....

[Beverly]

I'm in Edmonton and a month ago set up a 10g using tapwater and Prime. Even though the rock is still curing, I do weekly water changes, making sure to siphon out the crud that accumulates on the tank bottom. I top up with old-fashioned kalk mixed with RO water purchased from Zellers. Mainly softies will go in this tank, though I might try sneaking in a BTA. The light fixture that came with the tank kit holds a pair of household daylight compact fluorescents which, I believe, emit the equivelant of 120 watts of conventional light.

When I was in the hobby a few years back, I used nothing but RO/DI in our tanks ranging in size from 28g to 180g and felt I was doing the right thing. With this 10g, though, I wanted to go very low tech with low startup and operating costs. As I don't have a lot of experience using tapwater in a reef, I don't feel qualified to direct you toward one path more than the other.

You can find out more about Edmonton's water at Epcor Water Quality Reports.

According to this Water Hardness Scale, Edmonton's water appears to be on the border between soft and slightly hard.

HTH

[Coleus]

Well, if you are going to set up reef tank, I agree with Brad. Why taking a chance of tap water?


Also, using tap water means you will use more carbon and GFO more which i think overtime, it costs more than the RO/DI unit.

[RGS88]

Out of curiosity, how much is the RO water at Zellers (or other stores in Edmonton)?

[sphelps]

Look at it this way, you'll find lots of debate regarding whether tap water is acceptable or not but you'll have a hard time finding the same on RO. It's typically fair to say RO won't cause you issues and it's better than tap water, tap water can work though.

On another note advice from some LFSs can be misleading, remember these are businesses and more often than not their goal is to make you a customer. Therefore many will at first steer you away from many of these so called options is hopes of preventing you from getting overwhelmed, essentially keeping things as simple as possible. It's not necessarily bad advice, just sometimes misleading.

RO units are also typically inexpensive, aquasafe units are pretty common in the hobby and a full five stage system with RO and DI can be purchased from their ebay store for around $125 shipped.

[Beverly]

At Safeway, they have the smaller (about 3.5g to 4g), disposable containers for about $5.00. At Zellers Northgate, reusable 5g is about $5.00 with a $10.00 deposit for the first container. It will take me months to use the 5g I have for top ups, but if I used store water for my entire tank and weekly 25% water changes, I'd definitely buy an RO/DI unit. Using tapwater gives me lots of leeway to do larger water changes than I would normally do with RO/DI, though.

Really, there is no reason you can't start with tapwater, then upgrade to an RO/Di system at some later date. A few large water changes on your tank would pretty much reduce the tapwater ratio close to 0% quite quickly.

BTW, Edmonton's water is treated with chloramine which is a compound made of chlorine and ammonia, and it's more stable for water treatment than chlorine.

[bignose]

Paddyob's tanks is running with tap water treated with prime.

There is 2 treatment plants here in Edmonton each will have different water parameters. Check their water test results on the city of Edmonton's website, I've seen it before but I haven't checked for quite some time.

Personally I use ro/di but you CAN use tap water.

[asylumdown]

My 90 was run on tap water in Calgary because I had no where to put an R/O system in my last condo. It's true that there is the chance a freak event could happen and tap water could nuke your tank, but to be honest, if something like sewage or untreated water, or some sort of heavy metal accidentally gets in to the municipal water supply I'm of the opinion that our tanks should be the least of our worries. I drink that water.

In reality, those sorts of events are probably not something you need to worry about on a day to day basis, and as many people on here have demonstrated, tap water is generally fine. However, just because it's probably not going to nuke your tank in a one time freak accident doesn't mean that tap water is 'ideal'. Not for the big bad fears, but for day to day annoyances. There is significant seasonal variability in the quality of our water, it's always top notch from a human consumption point of view, but from a reef tank perspective, it could be good sometimes, and not so good others. I'm not sure where edmonton's main water source comes from, or what regions it travels through to get there, but Calgary's drinking water starts in the mountains and thankfully travels a pretty short distance before it gets to us. As a plus, Calgary's mountain water is actually pretty hard, which can be beneficial for a reef tank. As a minus, the mineral content isn't always constant, so reef specific salts would sometimes lead to solutions with sky high alkalinity when mixed with tap water, and other times it would be spot on.

Also, there was a distinct seasonal appearance of certain types of algae. In the spring I noticed I was constantly battling diatoms, I assume from all the silicate that the snow melt was carrying down from the mountains. In the summer, I learned to not do a water change within a few days of a major rainstorm (which made June a very tricky month), as cyano would explode if I used post-rainstorm tap water. Again, I'm making an assumption, but I think it's because right after a heavy rain the nutrient content of our tap water probably spikes.

So yes, it can work, it's probably not going to kill your tank, but if you end up with mysterious algae problems or unstable water parameters, you're never going to be able to totally isolate any one specific variable or cause with the wild card of tap water in the mix.

[blacknife]

I use tap water in leduc(supplied by ed). I do have minor algae problems that have not gone away with pelets, prodi bio, or now zeo. My. New makeup water usually tests .04 to .06 with a hanna meter. My tank tests 0 to .02 usually. I run carbon in my mixing tank and used to run phosphate remover but ran out. Looking to get a household sized ro, and di for the fish at some point soon. All corals and fish look ok, sps are couloring up better on the zeo but still not the best yet.

[reef-keeper]

I use ro/di and fill a 33 gallon pail, with an air stone and heater for water changes. I fill it after every water change to be ready for the next one.