Ro Or Not Ro. That Is The Question.

[Shaddex]

DO you have to use RO for water and chages ? or can you use tap-dechlorinated water ?

 

[Chris_C]

RO water is a must for marine .. tap water will cause lots of problems down the line.

 

[Donya]

Just made a lengthy post about that somewhere...not sure where it's gone. Darnit.

RO for a first tank is always going to be easiest if for no other reason than reducing the number of things to worry about while learning the ropes with the rest. Still, whether tap is an option to consider at some point depends on:
- What comes out of the tap chemically (look at water quality reports from the area) and how much you like a chemistry.
- What animals you're going to keep. A few hardy hermits and snails is one thing, but a tank loaded with finicky SPS and needing all params exactly so is a different beast.
- How much bothering about you want to do post-mixing as far as fixing KH and such. Hard water is a particularly irritating thing to deal with.

Reasons to use RO instead:
- No need to read reports or read up on chemicals.
- No post-mix tweaking if you got good salt to begin with.
- Much less to worry about for a first tank.

I'm not trying to preach tap, since I do it both ways. I run my picos and nanos on tap for WCs (but RO for topoffs) because I live in an area where the tapwater is actually quite good compared to past places I've lived, it has worked out to be a bit cheaper for me, and I don't find occasional micro-management of params off-putting with small volumes in the 1-20gal range. However, my 55gal is RO-only because it's my first experience with certain types of corals (peace of mind) and the idea of doing the same tweaking on 55gal of water did start to become a bit off-putting for me.

 

[-Nemo-]

Adding onto Donya...
As one of the very few reefers on here who use tap,

It's a pain in the behind. It's taken me years to get algae blooms under control and that will be one of your main problems, excess algae. I'm a hypocrite in the fact that I always tell new people to use RO, because it will make it so much easier for you.