RO water or rain water

[miamiangler]

I am just wondering if anyone has used rain water for topping off your tanks ? I`m now in the rainy season here in South Florida . there`s no chemicals so I`m thinking it should work . I use natural sea water anyway .

 

[AZDesertRat]

Unless testing with a handheld TDS meter shows it to be 0 TDS, don't put it in your tank. Rain water is not usually that pure, as in acid rain etc.

 

[redfishbluefish]

Rain cleans the atmosphere. I can tell you, owning a pool, that I need to add a bunch of PH plus to maintain my pH....it's acid rain. And who knows what else is in there. You could always collect some rain and test with a TDS meter. I know I wouldn't use it.

 

[racoloish]

I have use it for freshwater but never for saltwater. You should test it.

 

[SloppyJ]

I doubt that your rain water would be clean enough to use in a tank.

 

[miamiangler]

Well in South Florida we don't have smog or air pollution like up north . most of the rain come from offshore and south this time of year . it has rain all day so when it starts up again I will do some testing .

 

[miamiangler]

Well it looks like it`s not as clean as I thought ! Tap water has 400TDS and the rain water 228TDS . Looks like I`ll stay with my RO water that is 0.00TDS

 

[CBurgei]

I would never add any rain water to my tanks. I just would not want to take any chances that there is something in the water that could potentially cause harm to your fish or coral in the tank. All living thinks that are added into these salt water tanks is very expensive and I would never take the chance. Even with testing there could be some other dangerous parasites in the water because collecting the rain water means that other things can be collected too.