Examine my city water report?

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99RedSi

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Dec 2, 2002
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If I can get info regarding what is in my city water, can someone analyze whether it would be good enough for a FOWLR saltwater tank? Heck, even reef, why not? Although I won't do reef for quite awhile since I just started gaining interest in SW hehe :)

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In 99.9% of cases, it's going to be tolerable water. ALL municipal water sources are going to have a little bit of nitrate, phosphate, and silicate in the mix, so it's pretty much always best to use RO/DI water instead of straight tap water.

The only water that I've seen that I would be hesitant to use in a tank came from a cattle farmer's well, and I wouldn't have used that water for myself either!
 
Wait a minute...

How do you guys (since I don't have a SW tank at all) do water changes? With a big container or something?

How do you do this with display tank in living rooms? I don't want a big, ugly container around!

I'm so new it stinks! lol And I don't even know if I'm going to invest in this since it's quite expensive :(.
 
yep, big ugly buckets is the way to go.

JMO- I wouldn't do any tank with tap water, even FO setups. My fist marine tank was FOWLR using tap. It was almost my last. Switched to RO/DI on subsequent tries and things go MUCH more smoothly. Granted your tap is likely different than mine, but purified water makes so many headaches disappear. It's well worth the investment.
 
Many people do use the big ugly bucket. If you don't want to see it, simply get a bucket that will fit under your stand. Personally I had an empty 10G tank im my basement, so I use that to mix my water.
 
Sounds like alot of time to haul a bucket around. Can you syphon it from the bucket back into the tank or something?

There has got to be an easy solution since so many people are into SW...
 
It depends on the scale...

I have a 40 gallon FW, a 20 gallon 'pond', a newt tank, and a killie fry tank on the main level. We filter water into a trash can, downstairs. I bucket all my water, about 30 gallons a week.

For the 180 SW system, that is downstairs, we have a large tank on a cart. The water is mixed with salt in this one, heated, then rolled forward to the tank. There's a valve on the bottom, so the water just drains into the sump. Much easier than bucketing the water, since that would be 60 gallons every other week. When not it use, the cart stays in the fish room.

Okay, so it end up being 60 gallons every other week for either FW or SW, no matter how you look at it. I get screwed by having that stair case in the way. Maybe when I get the other tanks set up....
 
It's not so bad. Routine makes PITA tasks easier. I have a small powerhead in my mixing bucket to, well... mix it. When it's time for a w/c, I just pull the bucket over, attach a length of tubing to the PH's output and fill my tank back up.

Glad to see that you're examining all the overlooked kick-in-the-pants jobs that comes with owning a marine tank. Always better to know what you're getting into first.
 
I have an empty 55g Oceanic Nature's View aquarium just sitting pretty in my living room right now.

If I had a FOWLR tank WITH a sump (10g, I suppose) then the following would be the process (big picture) for a water change:

Use a python to syphon out water the amount is.

Bring in the already prepared water container (with salt, all that, etc).

Syphon the water from the tank into the sump (with the pump turned on, obviously)

Would this do it?
 
Originally posted by Satchmo
It's not so bad. Routine makes PITA tasks easier. I have a small powerhead in my mixing bucket to, well... mix it. When it's time for a w/c, I just pull the bucket over, attach a length of tubing to the PH's output and fill my tank back up.

Glad to see that you're examining all the overlooked kick-in-the-pants jobs that comes with owning a marine tank. Always better to know what you're getting into first.
Click to expand...

You haven't seen planning until you see how much I'll plan for something like this! BTW, how much does it cost (average) for a 55g FOWLR tank?
 
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