Friend Needs Advice.....

blu-thang

blu-thang

Member
My friend has a 5 year old 100 gal FO tank when he first started the tank, he used regular tap water and it is doing great.Now he is considering to go reef. His concern is that he used tap. Now I Know tap water contains harmful metals and other toxins and is not recommended. Does he need to start all over?or what is the best advice on what he should do?thanks in advance:)
 
dacia

dacia

Active Member
I don't think that he needs to start completely over, however, I think that a series of water changes with better water would be a must before adding any corals. Or, you could test the water for contaminants...some water, definitely NOT the majority of anything, does not contain harmful garbage to the degree that it would hurt a reef.
 
cprdnick

cprdnick

Active Member
What has he been topping it off with? If it's five years old and he's been filtering it or skimming it for that amount of time, I doubt there is much to worry about. I would definatley test the water for Phosphate, and I agree that several very good water changes should be necessary before even thinking about adding corals.
 
blu-thang

blu-thang

Member
Well he has informed me that he has been topping off with tap all this time, he has live sand and one of my concerns is that these contaminates have the ability to imbed within the sand which can later be a problem,he has also informed that he has a skimmer running for about 2 yrs .
 
bang guy

bang guy

Moderator
I also have a concern about heavy metals. Especially copper. You can get the analysis of the water, it's publich State maintained information. If the copper level of your tap water is above 0.1ppm I would suggest tossing all the sand & rock and starting over. It will certainly have leeched into the aragonite.
If it tests low in copper then if it were my tank I would siphon out the top 1/2" of sand and keep it warm in a 20 gallon rubbermaid container with an airstone & plenty of water.
I would then siphon out the rest of the sand, discard it, and replace it with a good quality dead sand. I would then add the topsand back into the tank.
Have some AmQuel on hand just in case there's a small ammonia spike (I doubt it).
You'll need a lot of replacement water ready before you start siphoning but all of this can be spread out over several days if need be.
Just what I would do... I'm sure there are lots of ways to convert to a reef.
 
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