Water Changes using NSW from White Rock

[FragIt Dan]

I work at DFO as a marine biologist and looked into this extensively (I currently have about 400G of tanks going). After consulting with several people at work in different disciplines, I decided it was definitely NOT something I wanted to do. The 'pros' list is short... some plankton and bacteria can be beneficial, but there are products designed to feed your corals that will do much the same and in most cases in a far better way. The 'cons' list is long... think of what the common flu virus did to North America when it was first introduced. You are exposing your tank to a heavy inoculation of viruses, bacteria and plankton for which your inhabitants have limited or no natural defenses. Furthermore, the phosphate levels are far higher than I could figure out how to deal with for cheaper than making my own ASW. You would also not want to store the water for any period of time as I suspect a die off of the plankton and associated spike in ammonia etc. There is also a long list of other contaminants that can accumulate in your tank. The Vancouver aquarium is set up on large scale industrial type filtration with heat exchangers and a bunch of other toys. I have seen ASW mix in the 'behind the scenes' area (I was a diver there for a while) and always assumed they made up there own for their tropical displays, but looking at Aquatro's comments, they might only be bumping the salinity up (but I highly suspect they are not using even filtered local ocean water for their tropical systems that house corals). I would strongly discourage you from trying to use local water regardless of treatments. It is my opinion the gains you are looking for can be had to a much greater degree, far safer and with much less expense in time (and $$) using a simple coral food. I ran the numbers to calculate how much water I would need to produce a bottle of coral food with similar plankton density as some of the commercially available products (I ran density analyses on them myself)... 1000's of gallons of local seawater to get a single bottle of product. This was not going to be my get rich quick scheme ,
Dan

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

If you ever see a behind the scene's tour of the Van Aqua. you'll see that they have huge, very extensive sand & other filtration systems and their nsw is not collected near the surface, which is what you would be doing.

You're much more likely to contaminate your tank and kill off your tropical livestock than see any benefits.

Coldwater BC tank, go for it. Reef tank = NO.

[burgerchow]

Or, you could move to Hawaii, get a beach house and run continuous sea water into the tank. Use the ocean as your sump. LOL

Actually, the Waikiki aquarium uses water pumped in from the ocean.Much cleaner and pristine looking water than ours.

If I lived on waterfront property in White Rock, I would do a large coldwater tank and just pump in sea water directly into the tank and overflow directly back into the ocean. Wouldn't even need a filtration system. ( this assumes the intake would be at least 10 feet below the surface of the water, where there are very little temperature fluctuations, and hopefully, less scum)