RO Water vs Tap Water (Edmonton)

[phyto4life]

I use nothing but tap water @ 170 ppm


difenately if you can afford rodi go with it, as using tap water is imo more for someone that can identify problems and solve them fast. There is no room for error using tap water and 1 extra fish or coral that requires feeding/poo's can throw things out of whack in a hurry. Not to mention the fish's growth etc

[Bryan]

Originally Posted by phyto4life

I use nothing but tap water @ 170 ppm


difenately if you can afford rodi go with it, as using tap water is imo more for someone that can identify problems and solve them fast. There is no room for error using tap water and 1 extra fish or coral that requires feeding/poo's can throw things out of whack in a hurry. Not to mention the fish's growth etc

Wouldn't even consider it in a reef tank, trace elements like copper from your house pipes will slowly build up in the tank and eventually absorbed in the live rock poisoning your invertebrates etc..

My local water (GVRD) is around 12-15 ppm and I use strictly DI

[SpruceGruve]

Originally Posted by Bryan

Wouldn't even consider it in a reef tank, trace elements like copper from your house pipes will slowly build up in the tank and eventually absorbed in the live rock poisoning your invertebrates etc..

My local water (GVRD) is around 12-15 ppm and I use strictly DI

this makes complete sense.

also i live by edmonton.
im not a salt guy,im a freshwater guy, and even with freshwater i need to use RO water to get certain fish to spawn.
not to mention you live in edmonton, your water is 7.8 and HARD.
some fish just wont do well in our city water

[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

[RGS88]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.