Should I be using city water for tank??

[clownfishowner225]

I have a 20 gallon salt water tank. For the first couple of weeks I had filled it up with purchased distilled water from my local store. People say to not use city tap water but I don’t want to keep buying distilled every time because of the price and the amount of water it needs.can I use tap water and use my seachem prime?? Or let the water sit in buckets for a couple days before using it?

 

[Clownfish_Boy]

If you use tap water, you must treat it with a dechlorinator which will neutralize Chloramine. If you use treated tap water you may run into problems with green hair algae. That is what happened to me til I acquired a RODI unit. City water is often high in phosphates, which promotes algae growth.

 

[Suohhen]

I have a 20 gallon salt water tank. For the first couple of weeks I had filled it up with purchased distilled water from my local store. People say to not use city tap water but I don’t want to keep buying distilled every time because of the price and the amount of water it needs.can I use tap water and use my seachem prime?? Or let the water sit in buckets for a couple days before using it?

I wouldn't advise it, letting it sit will gas off the chlorine, but not chloramine which is very common in city water. And occasionally they up the amounts drastically to clean buildup from pipes. Besides that there are heavy metals and all sorts of other nasties in tap water. The standard in this hobby is RODI which is obviously a big cost/job. The middle option is to go to water stores. They typically run very large ro units which are highly efficient due to size and able to get the water down to 1 or 2 TDS. Not every store sells such pure water so only go to a store where they show the TDS.

 

[Brady4000]

+1 RODI

 

[Neros503]

I used normal tap water in my first tank. Biggest disaster. Sooo much algae corals looked terrible and the fish seemed unhappy. I tore down the tank and started a new one with ro/di water. When I switched to using ro/di, everything looked many times better. I'm using the ro/di buddie right now. it's cheap and works well for the price.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Not even with dechlorinator. Not all water treatment plants are the same. They don’t use the same chemicals to treat water. They basically do have the same procedures though. There are several compounds that are used. In these compounds are heavy metals, ammonia, nitrates, phosphates, silicates, fluoride, Chlorine and various other compounds. Don’t get me wrong, these are great for us humans as far as water treatment but they are not good for our Saltwater tanks especially our saltwater reef tanks. Ammonia, nitrates and phosphates are also excessive nutrients that help to fuel algae issues in the tank. We all know what ammonia will do to fish in our saltwater tanks. Many a times folks will make their own partial water change water and are wandering where these compounds are coming from when all the time they were adding them themselves by using tap water in their partial water changes. Silicates are famous for fueling diatoms in the saltwater tank.
There are several items on the market that claim to help get rid of these compounds in our tap water. They really don’t get rid of them but just bind them so they are not as lethal as they were. They are still there. Things like the heavy metals are always there and we then wonder why the ICP test shows metals. In the beginning there is not much harm but as the tank gets older the tank accumulates more and more of these harmful compounds until finally the tank crashes and then the next thing you know someone is posting a thread asking " why is my reef dead" .
The best bet is to get an RO/DI unit. These units can filter out 99 -100% on these compounds. They contain pre filter units and then the water goes through a reverse osmosis membrane and then though a deionized unit. There are other types of water like RO and distilled that are not as effective as an RO/DI but still better than using tap water.
I had a 360g in which I used my well water with the belief that a whole house and water softener was adequate. The tank worked but I lost things here and there and since using RODI - I see the B I G difference.

 

[Azedenkae]

I am lucky to be able to use tap water where I live. Treated with dechlorinator, though not 100% sure it is needed. When I last checked allegedly Chicago does not use chloramine in their tap water, but that's not 100% exact so yeah Prime is used.

I do have some issues with algae, but corals and fish are growing well so I guess yeah I got lucky. Plus I do feed a lot, so it seems like the algae issue stems more from that than using tap water.

I do filter it through a Pur filter though. Chicagoan water tastes bad drinking from the tap, so we have one for us to drink... and because my aquariums are only 20 gallons and 2.65 gallon, I can get away with using water from the Pur filter for my aquariums. XD

 

[Brady4000]

Not even with dechlorinator. Not all water treatment plants are the same. They don’t use the same chemicals to treat water. They basically do have the same procedures though. There are several compounds that are used. In these compounds are heavy metals, ammonia, nitrates, phosphates, silicates, fluoride, Chlorine and various other compounds. Don’t get me wrong, these are great for us humans as far as water treatment but they are not good for our Saltwater tanks especially our saltwater reef tanks. Ammonia, nitrates and phosphates are also excessive nutrients that help to fuel algae issues in the tank. We all know what ammonia will do to fish in our saltwater tanks. Many a times folks will make their own partial water change water and are wandering where these compounds are coming from when all the time they were adding them themselves by using tap water in their partial water changes. Silicates are famous for fueling diatoms in the saltwater tank.
There are several items on the market that claim to help get rid of these compounds in our tap water. They really don’t get rid of them but just bind them so they are not as lethal as they were. They are still there. Things like the heavy metals are always there and we then wonder why the ICP test shows metals. In the beginning there is not much harm but as the tank gets older the tank accumulates more and more of these harmful compounds until finally the tank crashes and then the next thing you know someone is posting a thread asking " why is my reef dead" .
The best bet is to get an RO/DI unit. These units can filter out 99 -100% on these compounds. They contain pre filter units and then the water goes through a reverse osmosis membrane and then though a deionized unit. There are other types of water like RO and distilled that are not as effective as an RO/DI but still better than using tap water.
I had a 360g in which I used my well water with the belief that a whole house and water softener was adequate. The tank worked but I lost things here and there and since using RODI - I see the B I G difference.

Thanks for sharing, I seen the post where you said you were using your house water for your reef. It was a post years ago. Was wondering how it worked out.

 

[marin8n]

RODI regardless of tank size. I struggled with the dechlorinators and buying gallons of RO for years and it's not worth the trouble. Get a decent RODI and setup a reservoir with a float shutoff valve and make your life easier. You can also build a more elaborate water mixing station while your at it be depends on your space/budget

 

[PatW]

I use city water which is treated with chlorine. It also has about 1 ppm nitrates and .1 ppm phosphates.

I use RODI water to mix my saltwater. The carbon blocks in the system remove the chlorine from the water. The reverse osmosis membrane gets the water from about 140 TDS to 2 TDS. It then goes through dioniziation resin and comes out at 0 TDS. If I felt like taking chances, I could just use the 2 TDS water that comes out of the RO membrane but I don‘t feel like taking chances.