TAP TAP TAP: Come on be honest....TAP Water?

TAP WATER FOR YOUR REEF TANK

  • I do not use tap water

    Votes: 695 66.1%
  • I use tap water

    Votes: 90 8.6%
  • I did use tap water in the past before I had an RO unit

    Votes: 153 14.6%
  • I use tap sometimes and ro/di sometimes

    Votes: 17 1.6%
  • I would use tap water in an emergency

    Votes: 124 11.8%
  • my tap water would kill my reef tank

    Votes: 98 9.3%
  • Other (please explain)

    Votes: 18 1.7%

  • Total voters
    1,051

revhtree

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Let me start with a disclaimer that RO/DI water for your saltwater reef aquarium is FAR superior to TAP water and you're taking a big risk using water straight from your faucet!

Now that we got that out of the way let's talk about tap water today. What about it? Well are you using tap water for your tank right now and have you ever used it?

Ok so if we're going to be honest then I'll start. A long time ago before R2R ever existed was a saltwater noob who didn't really know any better and was using water straight from his faucet to make water changes and keep his aquarium topped off! Good thing he lived in an area that the water wasn't all that bad. Cool thing is he had a pretty nice reef tank at one time using tap water. I will name no names but he goes by the name rev something or another. :p

Let's talk about this today!

1. How many of you, at one time, used TAP water for top off and water change water?

2. How many of you are currently using TAP water?



TAP WATER.jpg
 

NJDragonet

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In the past I have last time I did that was 2001. But there is a difference between tap and flitered water why did I stop my Flasher wrasse broke the net jumped out of the tank and into my lap 10 minutes after I added the tap water in I took it as a sign to stop I suggest you never add tap water take my word for it you do not want your wrasse to hit you in the nuts just to stop adding tap water *gulp.
 

Caseyoidae

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I used tap water for many years with no problems keeping fish, zoas and some lps. The last 5 years I’ve been using rodi mostly because of the sps bug. I did run a tank recently with tap for about 8 months with no real problems. This was also fish, lps and zoas. Recently bought a home with a well and I wouldn’t try it again.
 

Sm51498

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I used tap water until I couldn't anymore. The city started using phosphate flushes and ammonia levels also started creeping up. RODI is definitely the best way to go but man it was convenient when I could use tap.
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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ways to use tap water in reefing effectively:


-washing out your old filter media, no it doesnt sterilize it. Ask microbiologists, or hospital workers. or lab techs who work with bacteria, if rubbing tap water across surfaces accomplishes sterilization-and those are flat metal surfaces not even factoring true retentive surface area which we use exclusively in filtration. tap rinsing harms nothing, and is free, and dislodges floc. Bacteria come out of your tap, into your lemonade, you are drinking nitrifiers and mixed aerobes and pipe slough with every gulp.
If tap water was a sterilizing agent you wouldn't be drinking a hundred thousand live generalized aerobes per glass made

tap water is suppressive agreed, but not a sterilizing agent we should not fear it as we do


rinsing your old filter material in tap water inoculates bacteria into it while if flushes away scums, ironic.

-washing out your filthy sandbed so we can install it clean and unwreck your tank. tap is all we use for rinsing in the sand rinse thread, if you try and rinse w salt or RO you run out too soon, input half-rinsed sand, and kill your tank. tap rinsed to perfection= 36 pages of after pics beauty we have collected all in one thread. does rinsing sand in tap water remove the bacteria off sand? nobody has bothered to test to know, we all have an opinion though and what type of test kit we use determines that opinion. We never needed the sandbed bacteria, the other half of the sand rinse jobs on file are full instant bed removal it was only live rock bacteria we preserve. Some people manage sandbeds without rinsing, that's fine. if you want to see what post-rinsing looks like, we have five years straight on file and its all tap water earned.

-prepping a large tank cycle with tap water is fine and allows a full water change at the end, to export all the nitrogen species, replaced with clean water for the reefing go. saves us from having to make up 120 gallons x 2 the first round can be expendable tap, dechlor bottle bac and feed. Nobody has tested whether or not tap harms bottle bac; since we dose bottled bacteria initially into the water vs originate with it on surfaces I would dechlor in this case. there are careful ways we can cycle with new clean water and not arrive full of nitrate, but starting with tap + heavy feed means we can drive bacteria into surfaces very fast then swap it all out at the end
 
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BlennyTime

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I use tap water to rinse various things, but haven’t used it as a major water source for my tank. Although when I first set up my first tank and spent 3 days filling up 20 buckets one at a time, it was tempting!
 

marineman

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One thing to keep in mind is that tap water is not equal across the country. For example, my area has HORRIBLE tap water for saltwater (but things like african cichlids love it). It's very hard, TDS is beyond abyslam and basically a death warrant for a reef tank. I don't even drink it if RO water is around (i.e., when I'm not out and about without a bottle I brought from home).

In general though, it's best avoided.
 

fish farmer

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I started my first reef using well water, soon switching to a Tap Water Purifier (DI resin), then added a RO to that.

Now many years later I have RO/DI, just recently added a second DI chamber. I think it was last fall, I noticed that GHA was starting to grown in my DI and I had been great at WC, chaeto growth, etc. I noticed my DI was exhausted.

My town water is considered the best in the state of Vermont......but it is high in nitrates.
 

Ippyroy

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My tap is 22 TDS. 2 ppb copper and not a tiny amount of Radon and Uranium. I would quickly and easily kill my tank with that water. It is also not chlorinated. A 4 stage is all I need and the DI resin hasn't changed color yet in 6 months with making 30 - 40 gallons a week.
 

Dark_Knightt

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Let me start with a disclaimer that RO/DI water for your saltwater reef aquarium is FAR superior to TAP water and you're taking a big risk using water straight from your faucet!

Now that we got that out of the way let's talk about tap water today. What about it? Well are you using tap water for your tank right now and have you ever used it?

Ok so if we're going to be honest then I'll start. A long time ago before R2R ever existed was a saltwater noob who didn't really know any better and was using water straight from his faucet to make water changes and keep his aquarium topped off! Good thing he lived in an area that the water wasn't all that bad. Cool thing is he had a pretty nice reef tank at one time using tap water. I will name no names but he goes by the name rev something or another. :p

Let's talk about this today!

1. How many of you, at one time, used TAP water for top off and water change water?

2. How many of you are currently using TAP water?



TAP WATER.jpg
I use tap water because I dont have anything. I want a nice RO/DI system but 1. I dont know exactly what it is and how it works, and 2. I have a small 20g in my bedroom and im in grade 10 .
 

andrewkw

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Calling it tap water for this type of use is barely accurate. Calling it "mystery water" would be more accurate. While there are some very lucky people who have had their water tested and have crazy low TDS and may be okay with it, the majority of people using mystery water do so because either they don't care or don't know any better.

In 2005 I filled my nano reef with tap water and got a huge algae outbreak. For 1 week I bought RO water from the grocery store. Since I've used RO/DI always. I later learned the water was typically 175 tds out of the tap. At my current house the well water is very clean at 50-55TDS with a DI lasting close to a year despite making a ton of water.
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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my tap is like Andrews above, it will keep reefs alive we just have to engineer them for 3x the algae cleaning work tds overdrive

I would not use my tap from hard water texas in my reef ever, but if I had to due to some unavail issue of the other it wouldn't kill my reef. Id be rip cleaning the reef more often to keep algae at bay until clean tds water was avail

I haven't taken a tds reading for my apartment water, because all the fittings are caked white lol we have an indication.

that wal mart water above is my topoff water its great.
**I have seen that exact same water register as heavy ammonia on api though lemme find the thread. I didnt trust the test kits used in the measure, is why Im still using the water and making coffee with it. free ammonia would smell like cat water.
 
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