How many use tap water for their tank?

[davidrupe]

Nate,
I like your arguement for RO/DI the best. Along with Cindy. The chlorine/chloromine/phosphate/nitrate doesn't do it for me. But having the amound of metals in my tank double every 90 days, I evaporate about 1 gallon a day, does get me concerned. Are the metals enough to cause a problem, I don't know, but it does concern me. Maybe it takes 10 years for enough to build up to cause my tank problems, anybody know?

I have one of those 99.999% pure water stations right near my house. 25c per gallon. Is this the same as RO/DI water?

Anybody ever have problems with a tank that has been setup for a while because of metals in the water from using the tap?

PS: I think our math is wrong Nate. It doesn't double every 2 months, you just add 3ppm to the total every 2 months. It only doubles after the first 2 months from time zero. That totals 18ppm after one year. Point taken though.

 

[dedfish]

I use RO water here at work because we have filters installed through out the building. I know that the water quality out of the pipes is not that great and I wouldn't trust drinking it so I won't trust it in my tank, I've seen stuff in the water with my naked eyes. I also use filtered water just because everyone says you should. Monkey see, Monkey do!

 

[jango]

oh yeah, if i wont drink it i wont put it in my tank...

not that i drink RO/DI i just wont drink tap...

 

[Moe_K]

David, I was playing devil's advocate there.
I'm a big proponent of RO or RO/DI water.

My experience converted me.
For a long time after I set up my tank, I had a bad hair algae bloom. This went on for 18 months. I'd do water changes, run carbon, had a decent skimmer, and I pulled the hair algae I could. Sill my phosphates were at 2 ppm, and I couldn't get them lower.

Finally I bought an RO unit from what the folks on alt.rec.aquaria.marine told me (this was a while back). I first had phosphates measured at UMASS-Boston in the tap water. They were 2 or 3 pmm.
Then I had the RO water measured and no phosphates were detectable.
I started using RO water and did a lot of water changes. In 2 months after waging war on the HA, it finally went away. Oh yeah, the phosphates in my tank water dropped to not detectable.
Now I'm a believer.

 

[davidrupe]

Besides not necessarily looking nice, what problems do hair algea cause?

 

[TheUltimateNoob]

i also used tap water for the first month or two and had tons of unsightly hair algae, cyano, diatoms, etc. so i decided to buy a ro/di unit. all the algae went away and i haven't seen it since. could be just concidence but since this seems to have happened with a lot of people, i would say there's some correlation. i don't have any proof or quantitative data that ro/di is better but i pretty much go on experience.

i don't think algae really causes too many problems. just doesn't look nice IMO.

 

[starrfish]

When I switched to RO/DI, most of my brown algae went away. I noticed this particularly in my QT tank where I don't have any substrate. Before I went RO/DI, I tried a Pur water filter for a few months. It didn't have any impact on the brown algae. I couldn't stand the way the QT tank looked, so I bought the RO/DI. Now both my QT and my 75g are ALMOST algae free (still have to use the mag float, but not nearly as much as before).

FWIW, I live on the Cape. I asked my town for a water quality report - it told me absolutely nothing. I didn't even really say what they filter out of the water. The only thing I know is that we have 4 wells in the town and when they switched to one of the wells last year, the grout in my bathroom turned completely brown from the iron! I decided that cannot be good for the tank, so I bit the bullet and got the RO/DI. Best investment I made so far.

 

[Moe_K]

Hair algae is very fast growing and opportunistic.
It'll grow over your SPS corals, overgrow your green star polyps, and these organisms will die due to the over-growth.

But 'pods love hair algae. I never had so many pods.

 

[davidrupe]

Pictures of hair algea anyone?

Is the 25c per gallon water the same as RO/DI?

 

[TheUltimateNoob]

well you can't determine if water is ro/di just by the price. i used to get ro/di at 2 different places in salem, nh. AA has it for 20c per gallon and walmart has it for 33c per gallon.

 

[jango]

Pictures of hair algea anyone?

Is the 25c per gallon water the same as RO/DI?

i would go with the .50 RO/DI from a lfs...i believe spring water still has metals in it that would accumulate over time.go with RO/DI it will save you alot of headaches,in my experience(wich isnt much)

 

[jango]

well you can't determine if water is ro/di just by the price. i used to get ro/di at 2 different places in salem, nh. AA has it for 20c per gallon and walmart has it for 33c per gallon.

walmart sells RO/DI???

thats an evil place reminds me of petco for people...

 

[TheUltimateNoob]

hahaha. yes they do.

 

[Moe_K]

Skiptons sells RO/DI water for 50 cents/gal.
Tropic Isle is a bit more than that, from what I remember.

 

[Mike A]

I've used nothing but tap water for evaporation for the entire time that my tank
has been set up. I have a reservoir for top off water built into my sump. It holds
about 15-20 gallons. Water is drawn from this reservoir by a Litermeter doser,
pumped into a homemade kalk reactor and the water displaced by the incoming water
feeds directly into my sump.

NSW is always used for water changes, so only the top-off water is straight tap.
I've thought a lot about using an RO/DI, but can't get past the waste. I bought a
used kold-steril, with the thought of using several DI cartidges in a series, but haven't
installed it yet. It's on my to-do list.

I probably clean the glass more than folks using an RO filter, but it's mostly diatoms.
About the only problematic algae I have in my tank is valonia, which I try to keep
under control via manual removal. I also have thick sheets of hair algae that grows on
the insides of the corner overflows. I honestly think that hair algae behaves as an
algae turf filter, scrubbing the water of nasties while the water moves across the
inside of the overflow on it's way to the sump. At least once a month, I harvest these
sheets, as a form of nutrient export.

 

[davidrupe]

Good info Mike.
Nobody has yet to address the long term effects of metal build up as a result of evaporation.
Mike doesn't have that problem since he uses NSW for water changes.

 

[rks1789]

Does anyone use the Kold Steril system? I'm slowly working on building a tank and I like the fact that it doesn't have waste water.

It does leave some things in the water, but they seem to be the "good" stuff. This seems to be one of those "holy war" subjects. I do not want to use tap water, and I'm leaning towards this system for ease of use and even at 300$ for the system, and 50$ for cartridges (approx 5,000gallons per cartridge), in the first use that's 300$/5000gal = .06$/gallon. After that it drops to 50$/5000gal or .01$/gallon.

Some links:

marine depot sells them

poly-bio-marine (poly filter) makes them

I have seen some people (over on RC) say they use it and like it, but they don't say how long they have been using it.

There are the TDS zealots that say since the TDS coming out of this system are not 0, the water is no good. I'm pretty sure everything we add to the water before adding it to the tank are part of the Total Disolved Solids....

Just looking for info

 

[~Flighty~]

Walmart may not change their filters ever, or at least not often enough for our purposes. When I started (a whole 5 months ago) I was asking the same question and found several instances of tanks declining after two or three years of operation with no good reason. Things just start to die or fail to thrive that had been doing well. You wouldn't know what to test for , so you probably wouldn't find a culprit and would just break stuff down and start again.

The ro/di was worth the peace of mind and the waste isn't much of an issue for me. Well water and septic, out of the ground and back into the ground for us. I do use it to fill the washing machine or water the plants sometimes, and keep a trashcan full for a power outage.

 

[Armando]

I hate dealing with RODI slowness.

 

[NateHanson]

Your right about my math David. Sorry.

I'll just repeat for those that are discussing the merits of wal-mart, that AA sells RODI cheaper than the Walmart RO-only water. Plus Mike will test the TDS right there for you if you want. I'm confident that he keeps up with changing membranes when needed.

David, I'd be willing to bet that the stand that sells $.25 water near you is filtered tap water. It might be simply mechanically filtered, or it might be RO. It is not RODI since people don't really drink RODI. Apparently it tastes very flat.

Regarding metal accumulation. Copper is known to kill invertebrates in your tank. Corals, shrimp, anemone, etc. None of them can live with copper poisoning. As for other metals, I don't know. But it can't be good, and the cost of RODI versus the cost of all the livestock you're going to put in your tank, just can't compare. IMO.

Nate