Water Quality Question.

[aw gula]

Hi! I'm completely new to the saltwater aquarium world. However, I breed freshwater fish and have around 90 tanks. Most of what I do is with Tanganyikan Cichlids. I learned everything from my dad and kind of took the hobby to an extreme. Anyway. I have never kept a saltwater tank before. I have a 29 that I thought I might use for my first one. It was given to me by a friend and already has a crushed coral substrate. I plan on ditching that and going with live sand for the obvious reasons. It also came with a pretty nice back filter and lighting setup. My real question comes in with the water quality. I use tap water on all of my tanks (except for my discus tank.) My tap is great for freshwater tanks. It is very hard. Is it generally better for a Salt set-up to have soft or hard water? The only problem I've ever run into with my tap water was when the water company spiked the chlorine on the same day that I was doing a water change on about 35 of my tanks. Took out about 7,000 dollars in fish within in an hour.

I took it up with the water company and they installed a hydrant in my front yard. They come out and flush it every Friday so I have the best quality tap water around. So I don't think I need any Reverse Osmosis water for the tank. But yeah. I'm assuming that a high calcium water like mine will be good for the saltwater tank. Not sure though. Sorry for the long-winded first post! Thanks for the help though!

 

[aztec reef]

Not really cause even doe it has high calcium it has high magnesium and iron and some contaminants that aren't good to the saltwater ecosystem. you want ro/di for the best water quality, 29g is a good start, it sounds like you already have an idea of this..just keep asking Q's.Saltwater is so much better than Freshwater imo..
Welcome to SWF>

 

[baloo6969]

hey man. You'l probably hear this 83474 times, but tap water is not acceptable for salt tanks. Sure your fish may live for awhile so could your corals and inverts...but over time you WILLLLL have algae out breaks(caused by bad water) fish, corals, and inverts will suddenly die. Your 100+ items will become stressed....
the list goes on and on. The first thing to remember is dont cut corners. If you want to go salt, get a 200$ Ro/Di unit...it's worth it in the long run. And there are many more ways to save money in this hobby...but how you take tap water (wether the town comes and flushes the lines...which allows TONS of copper to be released), or you collect the rain, or your pump it out of the groun, or whatever...if it does not go through a RO/DI filter, it shouldent go into your tank.

 

[mr. green]

You need an RO/DI. Hardness is only one of may things you need to worry about and it probably is low on the list. Tap can cause huge issues in a SW tank so you need to go with RO/DI. This is one of the first things you need to buy when going SW next to the tank.
JMO

 

[aw gula]

I figured as much. Its really not that difficult for me to get RO water and its likely thats what I will do. My dad has a RO/DI unit for his Discus tanks. I will most likely just end up borrowing it.
I know what you mean about the copper being released. Every time they come out to flush it I have to time how long they are doing it for. If they don't flush the line for 10 minutes or more I go out there and complain that they are just stirring all the crud up and sending it into my tanks.