Crazy Question
- Thread starter Tuck
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ZoWhat
10K Club member
Straight tap without a dechlorinator? Chlorine gasses off in about 2-3 days.
You could be introducing unknown contaminates which likely is a non issue. You can test your tap water by buying a tester at Home Depot
But it is starting off on the wrong foot IMO
You could be introducing unknown contaminates which likely is a non issue. You can test your tap water by buying a tester at Home Depot
But it is starting off on the wrong foot IMO
Dkmoo
Valuable Member
Well, if you ask what the worse that could happen - it's probably something like this:
if just using tap to cycle:
nothing useful will happen b/c its freshwater so you won't get the right microfauna needed to properly cycle the rock for saltwater
if using tap to mix salt for salt water:
Chlorine will kill off your beneficial bacteria, nitrates in tap water will give you crazy algae problem, the arsenic, mercury, and other toxic heavy metal will bioaccumulate from the bottom of the food chain that will eventually kill your fish, the copper in the water will be absorbed in the rock then slowly released back to the water later, killing all of your inverts and corals, the hardness from the water will throw off all of your alkalinity tests and giving you the wrong baseline DHK on which everything else will be based on if you plan to keep corals.
Edit - one more point: the test to see if tank is cycled is the seeing the detectible levels of nitrates from the added ammonia, indicating that the conversion from ammonia to nitrite to nitrate is working. however, using tap the pre-existing nitrate will give you false positive conclusion.
if just using tap to cycle:
nothing useful will happen b/c its freshwater so you won't get the right microfauna needed to properly cycle the rock for saltwater
if using tap to mix salt for salt water:
Chlorine will kill off your beneficial bacteria, nitrates in tap water will give you crazy algae problem, the arsenic, mercury, and other toxic heavy metal will bioaccumulate from the bottom of the food chain that will eventually kill your fish, the copper in the water will be absorbed in the rock then slowly released back to the water later, killing all of your inverts and corals, the hardness from the water will throw off all of your alkalinity tests and giving you the wrong baseline DHK on which everything else will be based on if you plan to keep corals.
Edit - one more point: the test to see if tank is cycled is the seeing the detectible levels of nitrates from the added ammonia, indicating that the conversion from ammonia to nitrite to nitrate is working. however, using tap the pre-existing nitrate will give you false positive conclusion.
Last edited:
tehmadreefer
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It will cycle, lol a lot of ppl cycle with tap
Tuck
Community Member
Thanks a lot of knowledge right there
ZoWhat
10K Club member
Wow. It's a wonder that the 100s of 1000s of ppl who use dechlorinated tap water ever have a surviving tank.
cycling dry rocks with dechlor tap is fine by me I wouldnt kick it out of any of our cycling posts. we want reefers to change all their wastewater anyway out at the end, so why use the good make stuff.
*reason why we do the big water change at the end: not for free ammonia even though the nine dollar tester at hand says there's a worrisome amount left. its twofold, reason one is to start with less algae fuel and less rando mixes of dosers like prime, four brands of bottle bac etc and instead start reef animals in truly clean water and 2. so that when they continue testing ammonia even though warned not to, they get .5 on totally new clean ro/di salt water and they can see for a second time their original test kit was useless, and not factored in our cycle start date at all
*its important to note that even after showing them twice over their non digital test kit was useless, the test kit still wins all cycling start date debates anyway. Dr. T trained us this well.
*reason why we do the big water change at the end: not for free ammonia even though the nine dollar tester at hand says there's a worrisome amount left. its twofold, reason one is to start with less algae fuel and less rando mixes of dosers like prime, four brands of bottle bac etc and instead start reef animals in truly clean water and 2. so that when they continue testing ammonia even though warned not to, they get .5 on totally new clean ro/di salt water and they can see for a second time their original test kit was useless, and not factored in our cycle start date at all
*its important to note that even after showing them twice over their non digital test kit was useless, the test kit still wins all cycling start date debates anyway. Dr. T trained us this well.
Dkmoo
Valuable Member
haha can't tell if you were being dramatic. but what i listed is the "worst case scenario" since that's what OP asked LOL.
In reality it REALLLY depends on what's in your tap so checking your municipality's water report is the first step. some have really clean water if their water source is from an unpolluted lake - like some of our OG reefers in Ontario. I forgot the users name by i remember checking his water report from thunder bay, ontario, and it was very clean and in all likelihood wont cause any harm - this user never used rodi and has an amazing tank.
if you live in flint, michigan, i wouldn't want to use that tap water.
Basically, either you gotta learn the water chemistry and research your tap water and take an educated risk, or roll the dice yolo it, or spend the 200 and get a rodi. up to each person to make their own informed decision.
