Sounds great. One of my future experiments will be a tap water reef nano.
Sounds great. One of my future experiments will be a tap water reef nano.
Update...I did a water change a couple of days ago using RO water again, and another water change today. Still have a lot of hair algae growing starting to grow in a lot of places on the live rock. Phosphates testing at .07, nitrates undetectable, calcium about 450. Hopefully the hair algae is just the phosphates bleeding out of the live rock. Time will tell. 180 gal reef using only 2 Sm100's.
.07 is high... start a thread with tests and pics of the screens.
We have pretty bad water in australia but i use carbon filtered water with no prime etc in my tank. you cant taste or smell any chlorine as the carbon takes it out. i do change filters fairly regulary as well.
I have the luck of having just 50 ppm TDS in my tap water, which is what lets me get away with a DI-only solution. I'm currently using this same Tap Water Filter to filter the water before I put it in the top off water bin.
I've been using rain water. do you think this would cause an issue? my tank has been running for 3 months now. My algae screen is getting green hair algae and red turf algae in spots. i need to hook up more lighting to the scrubber but that's a side issue.
I thought of using captured rainwater, but I wondered about all the dust and pollen and such that would wash in. I guess it would settle out, but I think using filtered tap water is just easier in the end.
I'm new here, learned of Algae scrubbers just a couple weeks ago. I love the concept, and will be building one shortly. In all my research, this was another topic i'm interested in. I ran my tank for 5 years with no RODI water. But My small town water in the mountains of Northern California is very good. Last years annual average TDS was 19. Our tap water tastes like bottled water. Never chlorine taste. I added an RODI unit about a year ago. Havent noticed a change in anything in my tank with better water, only my own comfort. I know there is ways to use the waste water. But Avoiding the system all together may be nice. Not having to heat my RO water in the winter would be nice. When I get my scrubber built I may try removing it. But then, I've had 5 years on my Tap water before with Zero water related issues. So I'm more comfortable with the idea than many may be.
I use a water treatment that breaks the chlorine and metals down in tap water... they are obviously still in the water but does this inturn give the scrubber more time to 'soak' up' these impurities??
A scrubber (algae) does remove most of the "bad" things in tap water (after all, algae does all the filtering in lakes and oceans), but it is not known yet if they are ALL removed. And what certainly is not known is if they are removed fast enough for you to put tap water right into your tank for top-offs (it's already assumed that you are not doing water changes anymore, so we are not talking about adding huge amounts of tap water at once; just small amount via top off). Chlorine is definitely NOT removed by algae, but chlorine will, in tiny amounts, evaporate as the water is circulated in the system. Chloramines (chlorine + ammonia) do not evaporate, but fortunately they are broken apart by ascorbate and ascorbic acid, both of which are produced by algae. After the chloramines are broken apart, the chlorine evaporates and the ammonia is eaten by the algae. Again the question is if this is done fast enough.
Some people are experimenting with using tap water instead of RO or RODI, but there are few results yet. I myself have a test 10 gal FW nano that I top off with tap (unconditioned), and for over a year it's been doing great. I pour in about a 1/2 gallon of tap water at a time. I also put small amounts of tap into my reef, but not enough to call it "top off". I have enough other experiments going on, so I can't experiment with reef tap water quite yet.
If you have live rock, or live sand, or any corals or inverts at all, your problem becomes copper. Copper can occur in city water or in wells. Yes a scrubber (i.e., algae) consumes copper, but the question is, again, will the copper be removed fast enough so that no damage occurs when you add the tap water top-off. Nobody has tested this, so it would be an experiment. The best test would be to start with an new tank, and add your corals or inverts one at a time (cheapest first).
In your mountain water situation, there would be no added chlorine or chloramines or copper. Probably just some nitrate and phosphate that the scrubber would get right away.
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