Fresh water - salt

[Fruju]

Hey everybody, i only keep freshwater fish at the moment but my dad is interested in setting up a small nano reef with limited livestock (including a few softies and maybe a couple of fish), however I have been told that you must buy a reverse osmosis unit to supply the freshwater for the tank for top ups, but I have seen people selling their set ups minus a R.O unit, So my Q is: do you need to buy one or is a de-chlorinator etc ok? R.O units are around 300+ that I've seen so want to know if money can be spared.

Cheers guys

[spoon]

if its a nano why not just buy ro water some pet shops will supply it

[Ira]

is a de-chlorinator etc ok?

Not really, no. Chlorine is the least of your concerns. Any trace minerals, metals or anything in the water will build up continually as the fresh water evaporates and is replaced with more contaminated water.

And if you can get a full setup for $300 you're doing pretty well.

[Fruju]

But buying a continual supply of pure water may prove less economical in the long run, and if we make a decision to upgrade then the R.O unit can remain rather than buying a lot of water from the LFS. yeah sorry about being vauge on the trace minerals and stuff I have read on it I was just not going into specifics :roll: as it drew away from main my question , any personal experiences as to maintaining one in terms of water?

[jolliolli]

do you know the tds of the water from your tap? the answer sort of depends on that. If you are only keeping soft corals you could probably be fine using tap water. I keep two sW tanks, one is my main tank which is predominantly hard corals and I use DI water for that, the other tank has just some soft corals in it (mushrooms, leathers etc) and i just use tap water for that and it ha been fine. But the quality of chch water is probably better than the water in Auckland. ALso your tank will be more sensitive to poor water quality as you are only keeping a nano, bigger the tank, bigger the dilution of contaminants.

[Fruju]

Never tested it, wondering does water ager matter like in freshwater? Does anyone in auckland use just tapwater - more specific, north shore?

[suphew]

Sooner or later using tap water will cause problems, no matter what you keep or the size of your tank. No tap water is pure, but the water that evaporates from your tank is, all the impurities are left behind in the tank. If your tap water is cleaner, all that means is it will take longer for the heavy metals etc to build up and cause problems. All a TDS meter will tell you is that there is 'something' in the water, you might have a TDS of say 35ppm which on the surface is pretty good. But you have no way of knowing if it is 35ppm of something really bad. For example that much copper from old pipes will kill all your corals (soft or hard) pretty quickly.

If you just 'getting your feet wet' with a nano, I'd suggest that you buy pure water from the supermarket (unless the LFS sells it cheaper), in a nano you wont go through much, one of those 6 liter bottles will last you a month. If your going to use ASW rather than NSW then maybe think about investing in a RO unit sooner.

BTW if $300 is worrying you, maybe you should do some research and work out a budget. One thing I have learned with marine is going cheap will do one of two things. Either make you fail, or cost you more when you replace the cheap stuff with what you should have bought in the first place. I don't want to put you off, but price wise salt water is a big step up from fresh water. Also smaller volumes of water are far harder to make work than larger volumes, I'd either have fish OR have some corals, trying to have both makes a tough job twice as hard.

[Fruju]

Thanks heaps guys really helpful, I have scouted out the prices for a while and is pretty much the only thing stopping me from doing one, so I have come to the conclusion that bottled water will be cheaper for a nano but it would make sense buying an R.O unit for anything substantial - no use risking heaps of dosh on potentially poo tapwater, most likely would want to upgrade as I'm addicted :roll: , at this stage a marine tank is a maybe anyways thanx for the info!!

[toppom]

Why not just collect natural salt water - you have it all around u in auks :lol:

[lmsmith]

The warehouse sells 10L containers with a TDS of 0. It's really cheap, and comes it easy to carry containers.

[nzquiet1]

A quick question, sort of along these lines, as I'm not thinking of looking into a nano as well. Does anyone just use stright sea water collected from the local marina or beach? Do you do anything to it, or use it straight?

Appreciate any hints as am only just sorting through what I should be needing and worrying about.

Regards,

Nzquiet1.

[suphew]

Why not just collect natural salt water - you have it all around u in auks :lol:

Unless you are making up artificial salt water (ASW) the RO/DI is only used for topping up the evaperated fresh water.

A quick question, sort of along these lines, as I'm not thinking of looking into a nano as well. Does anyone just use stright sea water collected from the local marina or beach? Do you do anything to it, or use it straight?

Yes a lot of people use natural salt water (NSW), the only thing you have to do it it is water it down a bit, the salinity in NZ is a bit high. It's also important that you collect clean sea water

[Ira]

For a 10L Bucket of NSW, how much do you suggest for freshwater to be added?

It's only about a liter, iirc. You should be testing it with a refractometer, though.

[suphew]

Yeah give or take it's about 10%, although I'm not sure why you would add "hot" water. I guess to help adjust the temp but IME it's not really needed (to be heated I mean).

[camnbron]

Best practice for freshwater topup is to to automate it using a suitable pump operated off a level switch or a timer.

Its especially important on smaller tanks to keep on top of parameters as in general they tend to be less stable - smaller water volume - hence the recommendation for people starting to have a decent size tank like a 4 footer.

With the timer, if you know how much water evaporates each day you can spread the topping up over the day instead of topping up all at once to minimise the risk of causing damage by sudden salinity or temperature change There might need to be seasonal adjustments made a couple of times a year though.

With the NSW, you just adjust it to suit what your desired tank parameters are before using it so its all good to go. You can guestimate to some extent, but the parameters in the NSW can be variable depending on what the weather has been doing etc,.

The only time I've worried about the temperature of water going into the tank is in the middle of winter when its cold as outside where my NSW barrel is. In that situation I just replace the water in parts - 10% water removed, replace 1/4, monitor temperature in tank, not too cold then repeat process until 10% water replaced.