tap water: yeh or neh

[meatball]

i heard that using tap water for aquariums is bad for the fish. so when i recently purchased my 55 gallon, i bought damn near 55 gallons of spring water. (thats what i was told to use by my lfs). did i do the right thing, or could i have just used tap water anyhow?

 

[billy61788]

i just use normal tap water and add dechlorinator to it...all my fish are fine, and i didnt have spend money on the water

i guess if you have horribly bad water than its best to use another source

 

[sinistral]

Within certain parameters, tap water is fine for most all fish. Like billy suggests it's important to add dechlorinator to your water. I understand that it's more important to maintain stable water chemistry as opposed to a specific water chemistry. What this means is that most tropical fish are very adaptable to a wide range of pH, kH, gH and so forth, though they may not do certain things like breed, for instance. However, they are not very adaptable to rapid changes in their water chemistry. Changing something like the pH or temperature rapidly can put tremendous stress on fish. So, it's better to acclimate your fish to your tapwater and maintain those conditions throughout all your water changes and so forth...

There might be specific details about your fish that I don't know about however. I'll leave that stuff to the experts... It might be a good idea to check your tapwater parameters and then compare them to what your fish like on a site like fishprofiles. If there are any gross incompatibilities, you might reconsider having your fish in your tapwater, otherwise, you could try to gradually replace the spring water with dechlorinated tapwater. I have no idea what the protocol for that might be though...

 

[thecichlidaddict]

Tap water already contains many of the elements that our fish need to thrive, like calcium, idodine, and a whole long list of other stuff. The only problem with tap water is the stuff that it contains that is bad for fish - luckily modern day water conditioners take care of this by neutralizing these elements.

This stuff tends to be filtered out of bottled water, so in the end you are actually lacking in it, and will need to make up for it using additives. You are much furth ahead to use tap water.

 

[BigSteve]

De-chlorinated tap water is usually fine. If you have extremely hard
water, and are keeping fish that like softer water, you could go 50/50 tap water
and bottled spring or de-ionized (also called R.O.) water.

 

[kmurph]

i bought damn near 55 gallons of spring water (thats what i was told to use by my lfs).

I have never heard of this one before. Sounds like a farse. I agree with thecichlidaddict and the others, just use an available de-chlor and you should be set.

 

[Adrinal]

The tap water here is sooo bad. I always had tones of trouble with it. I would take samples to the store and they would ream me for animal abuse the amonia was right off the charts (they would not believe me that it was from the tap and not from the tank ). I finally gave up and got an RO unit from sams club. I will never go back. Besides I am into SW tanks as well now And I save heaps on spring water.