natural sea water vs. homemade

[darklcd]

Hey all

I have been looking around and I have seen people start to use natural sea water in home aquariums. I am wondering if this is a good idea and if it is worth it as shipping water is going to be hard oh the pocket book.

Any thoughts?

 

[Skimmy]

i definately would never use NSW...
between pollution and potential infestation its just not worth it.
just use a good salt mix w/ ro/di water would be my opinion.

 

[Krish]

I live in the Bahamas with about 70 ft visibility easy and never used NSW. Its just a chance you are taking sometimes as you don't know what you are transferring into your tank with each batch. I just use Instant Ocean and call it a day.

 

[Thrawn]

I find it funny that you live on an island surrounded by one of the most beautiful chunks of ocean and you still use a salt mix. It makes sense, but still pretty funny.

 

[Darthv247]

pretty unlikely you will add any pollutants to your water if you collect and treat it properly, but yah too much hassle.

 

[Krish]

I find it funny that you live on an island surrounded by one of the most beautiful chunks of ocean and you still use a salt mix. It makes sense, but still pretty funny.

LOL!!! Yea, some people think I'm retarded . Better safe than sorry. Too much hassle lugging water from the ocean and treating it to be safe.

 

[chelseagrin]

i think if you live on the coast in somewhere with pristine natural seawater go for it, but if you dont its just not worth it to spend so much more for it. it wont have that many benefits if any to be worth the extra $.

 

[Paul B]

I live in New York and started my tank with NSW. I still use a portion of it almost every water change and if it were not so heavy, I would never think of using fake water. All of your animals came from NSW, none of them came from ASW.
I don't worry about pollution, paracites, diseases or manta rays.
Been doing it for 40 years and I never had a problem.
And I am in New York right near the City. I just walk out on an ocean beach and fill up a bucket. When I get home I wait for the temperature to become the same as the tank and check the salinity, it is low here in NY. Then I dump it in just as it is. :fish2:

 

[Krish]

I live in New York and started my tank with NSW. I still use a portion of it almost every water change and if it were not so heavy, I would never think of using fake water. All of your animals came from NSW, none of them came from ASW.
I don't worry about pollution, paracites, diseases or manta rays.
Been doing it for 40 years and I never had a problem.
And I am in New York right near the City. I just walk out on an ocean beach and fill up a bucket. When I get home I wait for the temperature to become the same as the tank and check the salinity, it is low here in NY. Then I dump it in just as it is. :fish2:

Yes, none of our animals came from ASW just as none of our fish came from glass boxes, but we keep them in them. Our little tanks however just doesn't have the volume of water the ocean has to dilute something bad in the water entering the tank and so you grab a bad batch of water and toss it in our little tanks without treating it/checking it and you can have serious problems on your hand. Using NSW is not as safe as using ASW IMO, if you are going to just collect it and toss it right in un-treated. Don't get me wrong, NSW as a whole is the real deal which no ASW could ever compare to in terms of make-up, quality etc, but....Crap gets dumped into it every day, there are free floating algae spores you may not want in your tank or even paracites and so it's all a gamble when you collect it. You never know what you are getting when you use NSW as anything can make its way into your container when you collect. Just because it is NSW doesn't mean every batch you get will be 100% perfect. The same goes for sand as an example. I'd never collect sand here and use it in my tank without treating it first. Why? Because I watched a 175 gal my friend cared for get completely wiped out from some paracitic worm looking things that was in the sand he collected and used in the tank as substrate. It wiped out every single living thing in the tank. He thought he could just grab sand from the beach and use it, but even sand needs to be "quarentined" in a sense.

Just my personal opinion.

 

[chelseagrin]

chances are if he lives in new york when the water gets up to tropical temperature all those spores and parasites will die off. his only real problem is pollution and apparently there isnt much of a problem there.

 

[dnjan]

i definately would never use NSW...
between pollution and potential infestation its just not worth it.
just use a good salt mix w/ ro/di water would be my opinion.

I've been using water from the Seattle aquarium for years.
I treat it with kalk to precipitate out phosphates, and adjust for the salinity when I do water changes.

 

[Krish]

chances are if he lives in new york when the water gets up to tropical temperature all those spores and parasites will die off. his only real problem is pollution and apparently there isnt much of a problem there.

So you are saying that warming up the water from where it is collected to what most people keep their tanks at (roughly 78F give or take a bit) will kill all spores and parasites? If so, I actually never heard of that one before. The fact that Paul for example has done it for 40 years doesn't mean his tank may not have been affected by it. Paul just keeps a tank different from most people. What the common hobbyist may turn up their face at (eg algae's etc which most consider a nuicance or a pest) Paul welcomes which may have come from the water he collected. Sometimes you'd hear Paul say that he has never seen that in his tank before and not sure where it came from or how long it's been there. Then there is pollution. All it takes is for you to collect some water right where someone has leaked gas or something else.

Just a few thoughts. For me persoanlly, its too much of a risk to use water from the ocean without treating it first. Same way you don't add fish or corals without quarentining them.

 

[chelseagrin]

thats exactly what im saying, but then that would also take a toll on the quality of the water.

 

[darklcd]

I live in Ontario canada so getting sea water is not going to be cheap so I think I will just stick to homemade lol

 

[mcdonaldjosh7]

Homemade is just easier...more controlled. You make the RO/DI water, you mix the salt with commonly known ingredients, so simple and controlled haha.