Need help ASAP

[Crazeh]

Welcome to R2R. Advice you've had so far is good so I won't cloud that, but just wanted to give you a heads up that under the 'General Aquarium Discussion' there is a forum dedicated to emergencies - if you run into any serious issues that you have no idea how to handle, support is available there (important when you have livestock in the tank).

All the best with your tank - look forward to seeing some photos.

 

[Tony757]

My 65g tank is 1 year old and I also started with tap water and Prime. After that however every top-up and water change was RODI and I now make my own. I did this due to the difficulty in sourcing enough RODI to fill the tank from empty and the fact the tank was going to be fallow and cycle initially. It is a hard comparison to make however as the quality of tap water changes so much worldwide and it depends exactly what you have in it. In my case in Sydney Australia we have very good quality water, and my tests show 76 TDI and no Phosphates. I have no idea what your water is like.

Regardless if you stick with RODI from now on you will eventually change out all the tap water. I do suggest you run Poly Filter to polish your water and help remove anything nasty that was in your tap water. That was what I did and I am happy with my results.

Good luck!

Thank you I appreciate it I will look into poly filters.

 

[Oldsalt]

I'm in Perth Western Australia but I live around 20 miles from the beach. Our drinking water quality is pretty lousy so I bought an RODI unit. I also bought enough Aqua one salt to fill this 320 gallon (add another 120 for the sump) up. The salt cost $330 and I still have it in its unopened buckets because I found a guy here that delivers super clean, filtered sea water (from the Indian Ocean) up to 5000 litres in one shot at $50 per 1000 litres! So I used his service to fill the tank and sump, plus the 1000 litre water storage tank outside. All up I used 3000 litres for only $150! He also sells great quality crushed coral at $25 per 20 kg so I bought 3 bags. That gave me a 1.5 to just under 2 inch bed. It stayed cloudy for less than 3 days and my cycle (added 100 kg - which is 220 lbs - cured LR) and Red Sea Marine start up kit. The tank took almost 6 weeks to complete its cycle and I now have 7 Chromis and 7 orange-blue Damsels and one odd coloured Blue-yellow Chromis who likes to shoal with the 7 Green Chromis. I also got lucky and have a clam who was embedded in a huge live rock that the LFS didn't see. It opens up often and is about 4 inches wide. Thankfully there's no damsel bullying - probably because I added them all the same day. Still have a sifting sea star, another red sea star and 5 hermit crabs that I added the 3rd week into the cycle as a clean up crew. There are pods galore both on the rock and in the sump. Protein skimmer doing a great job and water parameters excellent. I'm now nearly 9 weeks in and about to start adding more fish. I'm going slow here so not going to add coral or anemone yet. I want my bio ability to adapt to the increase in load proportionally. This is my third marine tank, however there's a 25 year gap between this and the last one. So I'm calling myself a newbie here because things have changed drastically in 25 years! I'll post a bunch of photos soon. So great to be here. 25 years ago it took a phone call and a bribe to get help from someone who knew about reefing!

 

[PatW]

I would suggest that you get an RODI unit.

Having your own way of making RODI water has several major advantages.

First, if you buy from someone, you are in a situation of hoping that they are selling you good stuff and have quality control. In my system, I KNOW that I have 0 tds RODI.

Secondly, it is convenient. I set it up. Fill my reservoir and I have RODI water ready to go. I also keep a batch of salt water ready to go. I don’t have to round up containers, drive to the LFS, fill my containers, lug them to the car, drive home and so on.

Finally, I make my own RODI and saltwater for far less than I can buy it for. An RODI unit will pay for itself, probably in the first year of operation.

 

[Oldsalt]

PatW is correct. I bought a high quality RODI unit online and it came with all sorts of fittings for kitchen faucet, outside taps and adapters for use on hoses. I simply unscrewed the screen from my kitchen faucet and screwed on the included adapter - which has a lever so you can use the faucet as normal then swing it up to get your RODI water. This unit makes 50 gallons per hour which is more than enough for me. I always have 50 gallons stored in 5 x 10 gallon containers and keep it indoors so the sun doesn't get in (no algae can form) plus it's at the same temperature as my aquarium. It's already paid for itself in less than 3 months. The 3 cartridges are all available at my local hardware store.
Outdoors I have an opaque 1000 litre saltwater storage unit with a pond pump connected to a hose. It makes water changes a breeze.