RO or City of Edmonton Water?

[sharuq1]

I would go with a quality ro. With city it is a mixed bag and you never really know what will be in there. Whereas with ro (especially ro/di) you can always add in only the minerals you want, whether that be with a good quality salt or with just the minerals themselves. (kent products, etc.)

IMHO I would recommend for anyone new to the hobby; going with a high quality salt and the ro or ro/di and worrying about possible additives later when more experienced. If the tank doesn't have hard coral or sps chances are you might not have to add anything.

[Edmonton Eskimo]

Edmonton water is higher in chlorine than most in alberta as it has a lot of pipe to cover as we supply the whole capital region with water. Other than that we have pretty good water. I would like to get an ro myself but haven't yet and I've used tap water since I started reefkeeping and haven't seen any direct problems from using it.

[Myka]

You can buy good quality RO/DI units for around $200. Best $200 I ever spent! No more packing water up to the second storey of my condo. Considering a 5 gallon jug of water costs about $2 the RO/DI unit will pay for itself after 500 gallons, not including the amount of time and fuel it takes you to go buy RO water. PLUS, making your own RO/DI water you get to use water with 0 tds...can't get any better than that. I was buying RO water before and found out it had a tds of 8 ppm...probably the cause of the various algaes I was waging war against for the last 8 months.

Do yourself a favor, and DEFINATELY do not use tap water...oh and don't listen to any other advice the person that told you that has either!!! LOL!

[Fishfanatic]

My tank has been running for over 2 years with tap water and Prime and I have never had a problem. And I keep all kinds of coral, softies, sps and LPS and a good friend of mine has had his tank running as long as mine with tap water and his corals grow like crazy.

[04scoobysti]

Tap water + Prime here too, was using bottled RO but switched back to tap as i could see no difference in the growth or health of my tank. I keep softies, LPS, SPS, clams, etc. and none of them seem to mind. But if you don't have the option on tap water straight from your tap, i would just get an RODI system setup. My 2cents.

[linz8392]

In your specific situation, get an RO/DI unit.

I've personally used tap water with Prime for 4 years now in my reef, and have had no major problems. Have had hair algae at times early on, but fairly easy to control. Edmonton's water isn't that bad.

It's funny that some on here are religious in their view to ONLY using RO water...they imply that you are stupid for not using it. But as you can see, many people use tap water with the appropriate chemicals to remove chlorine and chlorimines and it's not a life and death problem.

[Myka]

My tap water has a relatively low tds of 92 ppm. I used it years ago for my marine tanks, and always battled algae.