Water Quality

[fishkeeper2]

Is it possible create clean marine water for my tank without having a RO system? I can't afford to be getting one right now as I have to save for something non-fish related!
Surely you can start out with tap water and use some type of treatment to mix in to purify the water and dechlorinate it. Any advice on this and what products I would need would be fantastic, I am completely new to this and want to get started and buy my first batch of live rock in as soon as possible.

 

[xxBarneyxx]

Well if you are not going for corals you could use conditioned tap water. If you are planning on going for corals at some point though I would strongly recommend using RO water. If you cant afford an RO unit at the moment you will most likely be able to buy RO water directly from your LFS which would be cheaper in the short term (but it doesnt take very long before it works out cheaper to get an RO unit).

 

[fishkeeper2]

I wasn't planning on getting corals, but it's definitely a possibility in a year or so when the tank is mature.

What water conditioners will I need then?

 

[SkiFletch]

As Barney mentioned, if you're not keeping corals (AND don't have high powered lights I might add) then tapwater is fine. You really just need to remove chlorine/chloramine from the water.