LFS man gone crazy! (i think)

yothereyo

yothereyo

just fishing
Nov 18, 2006
208
1
0
UK, England, Hampshire
I want to the lfs today just to have a look around, and started to talking to the man about water quality, ect, ect.

Now he says that he use water 'straight out of tap', for all his display tanks and only uses Water Conditioner remove chlorine & chloramine. Is he gone mad or is this possible.

Also he said that you can turn normal sand into live sand after six weeks, as same with rock.

This shop has been around for 40 odd years and all his fish look healthy.

any thoughts.....
 
yothereyo said:
Now he says that he use water 'straight out of tap', for all his display tanks and only uses Water Conditioner remove chlorine & chloramine. Is he gone mad or is this possible.
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that's all I do too..... why is it such a problem?
 
It depends on the quality of the water coming from your tap. I would never use the tap water where I live because it is too high in phosphates. I made that mistake when I started my first sw tank and had horrible problems with cyano and hair algae. I converted over to RO/DI water and everything improved dramatically.
 
it's true./ / // I otherwise wouldn't use tap water, but it can be used. You might not get the best results, but it can work .

As for the live sand/rock. Provided you seed the tank with enough live rock, dead rock or sand will eventually become "live". Not sure if 6 weeks is sufficient, but in the long run, it'll eventually turn out well.
 
the problem is that every where you read it says not use raw tap water.

what if you filtered water through a brita filter would that have some effect, I know it will take ages, but when you are waiting for a tank to be delivered and have nothing better to do or would I be wasting my time.
 
I started my tank off with using just plain old tap water. I have read that in the US, phosphates are pretty low in most city water sources but apparently my city is the exception to that rule.

I agree that if the tap water is relatively clean with low iron (free and non-free) and phosphates, and I believe how old your system is in the house (copper and lead was used long ago), it can be used in combo with a dechlor chemical without too much harm done. The lfs I usually go to is in the next city south of mine and their water is much better for some reason than ours and so this is why I made the switch to RO water. Over the long run, I dont think that an RO unit is hugely expensive and this is coming from someone who has to pay for water. My bill only increased about 15 dollars a month and I do about 30 gallon water changes every other week.

I started my tank with half cured live rock and half 'almost live' rock about 4 months or so ago. I can still tell the difference visually, but when I move a rock, I can see that there is a big difference in what the almost live rock used to be (nearly pure white) and what it is now. I also skipped the whole cycling process completely by using cured live rock and live sand that was seeded by sand from an established tank at an LFS. I have had fish in the tank since about week 2 and have had no water quality problems at all.
 
I also use well water straight from the tap with no problems. When he said that normal sand would become live sand over time, he was telling the truth; paying $30 for a bag of "live" sand is a rip-off.
 
30 bucks is steep. Mine was 15 a bag, which was still more expensive than just play sand or something, but I had the money at the time, so I went with it. I also have to say that I got quite a bit of critters in the sand that I am not sure were so good to have like bristleworms. Even though they were few and far between, some got pretty large before I got my six-line wrasse who seems to be taking care of them quickly.
 
I use tap water in all my tanks, reef included. Only problem I've seen is that I've got excess caclium in my tap water, resulting in an eve higher caclium level once salt is added. Gonna be switching to purified water for the SW as soon as I decide how I'm gonna do that. And, FWIW, my house is about 50 years old and I haven't seen any copper poisoning due to the pipes.
 
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