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Filling a large tank advice.....


lowsingle

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I have a large tank that I am going to fill soon and am wondering if I should use RO or just fill with tap water and treat for chlorine, etc.......then use RO for top off.....any thoughts / recommendations?

 

Thanks,

Darren

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LOL. Nice Rob... :)

 

I filled mine with straight RO. Took a few days. 240 main display/80ish gallon sump.

 

Richie

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Fill with tap, let it run a couple of days to make sure there a no leaks. Drain, refill with RO.

 

If you want to be more green, fill with RO waste to check for leaks.

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Fill with tap, let it run a couple of days to make sure there a no leaks. Drain, refill with RO.

 

If you want to be more green, fill with RO waste to check for leaks.

+1 this seems like the best idea to me.

 

Siphon out the old waste water the best you can and then use a wet/dry shopvac to get the rest out.

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I think you are more likely to have algae blooms if you start with tap water. It'll take awhile for the nasties in the tap water to get consumed. Having said that, I recently had to do an emergency 200 gallon water change and I used tap water.

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NEVER use tap water.

What is the reasoning for this? I service 2 reef tanks that use tap water as their water source. I'm able to keep SPS in them too.

Nothing wrong with tap water if you know how to treat it and are prepared to handle the other issues it is known for.

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Wow, for a large tank. it will be hard to empty all of the RO waste water.  It can be done but it will take a lot of time.

Garden hose siphon trick.  The same way people drain swimming pools. 

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What is the reasoning for this? I service 2 reef tanks that use tap water as their water source. I'm able to keep SPS in them too.

Nothing wrong with tap water if you know how to treat it and are prepared to handle the other issues it is known for.

Just because it has worked elsewhere doesn't make it a good idea. Much more likely to end up with hair and other algae problems in the first year because you are starting with an extremely high mineral content as compared to RO water. After seeing what the filter cartridges look like after our "clean" local water runs through it I won't even drink the stuff, let alone have my corals living in it. In summary - you may be able to "get away with it", but that doesn't make it a good idea.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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What is the reasoning for this? I service 2 reef tanks that use tap water as their water source. I'm able to keep SPS in them too.

Nothing wrong with tap water if you know how to treat it and are prepared to handle the other issues it is known for.

 

You are asking me why tap water is bad for reef tanks? Try a TDS meter in tap water. Case closed.

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What is the reasoning for this? I service 2 reef tanks that use tap water as their water source. I'm able to keep SPS in them too.

Nothing wrong with tap water if you know how to treat it and are prepared to handle the other issues it is known for.

 

The main reason you should use RO/DI water is because tap water has unwanted heavy metals that you do not want in your reef tank.  By using tap water you are increasing the silicates, iron, copper, barium, lead, and mercury.

 

Also, when something goes wrong in your tank, not using RO/DI water adds another variable of where things can be going wrong.

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The main reason you should use RO/DI water is because tap water has unwanted heavy metals that you do not want in your reef tank.  By using tap water you are increasing the silicates, iron, copper, barium, lead, and mercury.

 

Also, when something goes wrong in your tank, not using RO/DI water adds another variable of where things can be going wrong.

 

I got a detailed report for Arlington Co tap water online and it listed phosphates! Its not that unusual for tap water to have phosphates. If you add nutrients to your tank via tap water (or in any other way) you will have to get them back out eventually.Why go there?

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I got a detailed report for Arlington Co tap water online and it listed phosphates! Its not that unusual for tap water to have phosphates. If you add nutrients to your tank via tap water (or in any other way) you will have to get them back out eventually.Why go there?

Phosphates are not necessarily bad. But when in conjunction with iron, silicates, nitrates, and several other trace minerals, yes it can cause algae to grow. But as he had said before, as long as you know how to combat it its not that big of a deal. But I am with you on way bother going through that headache.

 

The main biggie as I said before is the heavy metal in the tap water.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

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Phosphates are not necessarily bad. But when in conjunction with iron, silicates, nitrates, and several other trace minerals, yes it can cause algae to grow. But as he had said before, as long as you know how to combat it its not that big of a deal. But I am with you on way bother going through that headache.

 

The main biggie as I said before is the heavy metal in the tap water.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

+1 totally agreed.  Good points.

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Phosphates are not necessarily bad. But when in conjunction with iron, silicates, nitrates, and several other trace minerals, yes it can cause algae to grow.....

 

You are saying phosphates will not grow algae unless combined with the metals you mentioned? I never heard that. I have heard that zooxanthellae , because it is an algae, needs phosphates in ppb to grow. Dr Shimek says at 0.25 ppm corals get sick. 

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You are saying phosphates will not grow algae unless combined with the metals you mentioned? I never heard that. I have heard that zooxanthellae , because it is an algae, needs phosphates in ppb to grow. Dr Shimek says at 0.25 ppm corals get sick. 

That is exactly what I am saying.  If you have just phosphate, algae will not grow. there are other minerals needed for it to grow other than just phosphate, silicates being one of the more major one.  

 

 The idea of keeping phosphate low to combat algae is basically starving out the algae out of that nutrient to stop it growing.  But with recent discoveries, algae is not the only thing that needs phosphate.  So my thoughts on this is to combat algae, why not starve the algae of other nutrients.  Silicates being one of the possible nutrients we can control for the most part.  Without silicates algae can not grow. 

 

As for the 0.25 ppm of phosphates causing corals sick, watch this video from MACNA last year:

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With my experiences in the tank it seems there are 3 situations with phosphates and you can only pick one scenario. 1) higher phosphate levels producing nice color in SPS decent growth but unsightly algae in a lot of places. 2)get phosphates down, starve out the algae and lose SPS Color in only a few pieces. Still decent growth3) choke out all algae with massive SPS colonies soaking up nutrients and light. Finally starting to see option 3 come into play. Hope I didn't get too far off subject. My opinion is that RODI is worth the little bit extra bit of money and time. (Not worth the risk) I do however run up the TDS to 2-3 before changing DI resin

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I typically change r/o membranes when they've exceeded the 10% ratio of out going water TDS to incoming water TDS. Been using this method for years without issue.

I also use bottled water. In fact, the majority of the nice reefs that I maintain use bottled water simply for the convenience that it offers.

The 2 tap-water reefs have ZERO nuisance algae or cyano issues and grow SPS and are simply well taken care of.

 

There's a lot of hype and anecdotal evidence out there that discourages the use of anything but r/o water reef tanks, but much of it is simply not true and some of it may be marketing tactics proposed by manufacturers.

If you're an experienced hobbyist, you'll weigh the pros and cons of each scenario before committing to one or another.

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