NSW…. Discuss

[lukefish]

Just come across a website in the UK that will deliver natural sea water to your door.
Price aside, would you convert your tank to use natural sea water?

my main worry is their source and contaminates…. But they claim to supply to London Zoo, amongst others.

what could go wrong?

 

[FishRN]

I used solely natural sea water when I lived in Florida, I will say that I experienced much more algae problems with the NSW than I am now but don’t know if that’s the sole reason. Just make sure that there’s no jellyfish or anything in the water learned that the hard way.

 

[LgTas]

A number of older threads have covered it.

I use NSW from my local bay. Collect it off a shortish jetty. No filtering etc. Test N and P every few batches and ICP test tank once in a while to double check. Been doing this for 2 years for my mixed reef, nem, and softy tanks.

No issues. Beats paying for NaCl.

 

[Evo R]

Years ago when I started my first reef tank ever, I lived in a small coastal town. Nobody else had any marine tanks to speak of and it was uncharted territory!! So I convinced myself to give my dream a try because I had all the NSW available to me should something go wrong and saving costs ect ect.

Some things learned from using NSW:

If you live in an area that where there are no naturally occurring reefs, in other words cold water areas, you can use NSW for fish only systems. As you WILL always battle some form of algae issue ( mine was 24/7 365 red slime cyano ) Po4 is through the roof so that was a constant battle.
Had a massive jelly fish outbreak in my tank once. And the list goes on and on.

It may be different for you depending where in the world you live and what the water chemistry is like where you can collect water.

But know this, even though my house is literally 200 meter away from the ocean, I will never ever ever ( unless a massive disaster should strikes my tanks ) will i ever use NSW again!!
The juice is simply not worth the squeeze for me.

 

[jfoahs04]

Just wanted to weigh in on this. I’m running a nano on NSW exclusively. It’s the first time I’ve ever done this and so far, it’s been eye opening. My coral is growing faster at this point than at the same point I’m any other reef I’ve had.

I change ~30% biweekly. I fill up a 5g bucket at the beach. Pour it through a sock (to get macro floaters, algae, etc) into another bucket, heat to the temp of my tank, and then do the change the same day. I collect about an hour before high tide from the end of a jetty. I try not to collect if it has been rainy the previous few days. I check salinity (usually 1.024/5 here) calcium, magnesium, and alk. The alk of NSW is lower than what’s considered ideal, but the rest is ideal.

The real test will be the SPS. I’ve added three monti frags over the weekend and so far they look good. I have alk to dose if I need to, but I’m going to try and go unaltered unless I see something that indicates there’s a problem. But generally speaking, I’m very happy with NSW and would say I prefer it.

 

[LgTas]

Just wanted to weigh in on this. I’m running a nano on NSW exclusively. It’s the first time I’ve ever done this and so far, it’s been eye opening. My coral is growing faster at this point than at the same point I’m any other reef I’ve had.

I change ~30% biweekly. I fill up a 5g bucket at the beach. Pour it through a sock (to get macro floaters, algae, etc) into another bucket, heat to the temp of my tank, and then do the change the same day. I collect about an hour before high tide from the end of a jetty. I try not to collect if it has been rainy the previous few days. I check salinity (usually 1.024/5 here) calcium, magnesium, and alk. The alk of NSW is lower than what’s considered ideal, but the rest is ideal.

The real test will be the SPS. I’ve added three monti frags over the weekend and so far they look good. I have alk to dose if I need to, but I’m going to try and go unaltered unless I see something that indicates there’s a problem. But generally speaking, I’m very happy with NSW and would say I prefer it.

Interested to know what your NSW alk is? Mine here in Tasmania is naturally 7.0 dkh which I decided to maintain my mixed reef at. I have acros, birdsnest, montis, leptoseris, and pocillopora and have no issues with growth and health at that level.

 

[jfoahs04]

Interested to know what your NSW alk is? Mine here in Tasmania is naturally 7.0 dkh which I decided to maintain my mixed reef at. I have acros, birdsnest, montis, leptoseris, and pocillopora and have no issues with growth and health at that level.

I generally get about 7 too. Sometimes slightly under. Definitely not so low that I’d preemptively dose, but lower than the recommended 8-12. So I’ll see how things go at this level before trying to dose. Ideally, I’d like mess with as little as possible so it’s good to hear it’s working for you.