- Location
- Long Island
I am a guilty culprit of using tap water and I must say "lesson learned". For months, everything seemed fine until the introduction of a yellow tang I bought from a local fish store. Symptoms I noticed initially was that my yellow tang displayed tiny cotton like particles on his body which I thought was some sort of ich. Then he seemed to have recovered when the particles disappeared. A week later I noticed red spots all over his body which I cross referenced while researching the condition as internal bacterial infection. During this period, the fish died. For the most part, my parameters were on point as it pertained to Cal/Mag/Alk. My corals looked good and all the other fish like my chromis, clowns, wrasse, algae Benny, Niger trigger, and etc were doing fine. I added a blonde naso, (3) anthias, power blue tang, and a Red Sea Desjardini Sailfin tang. Not added all at once but were added one at a time every two weeks. All the tangs became sick perished. For some odd reason (at the time), they just all stopped eating. I remember vaguely on New Year's Eve coming home seeing my blonde naso tang attached to my power head and one of my anthias laying dead on the sand bed. A great emotion of panic hit me upon the moment of sight. I felt as if a family member had died. I called up my boy RKaragozler and expressed to him my concern and as a true hobbyist that he is, he told me to test ammonia, nitrate, cal, mag, and Alk. My mag was really low. I instantly did a water change to help replenish my water. Everything seemed fine once again and as a gift I guess to cheer me up, my buddy RKaragozler gave me one of his beautiful yellow tangs. The fish started showing signs of internal bacterial infection about a week later (red all over body) and the tang stopped eating. So one day I called up my boy FathomLed and inquired if he has ever had this issue before and he simply said, "Bro, something may be wrong with your water!" Fathomled told me to stop by his house because at the time he was upgrading my lighting system as well as my controller and he gave me (2) small boxes for a company that would test a small sample of my water and call me with the results.
Yesterday 2/13/2013 at approx. 4pm I received a call in regards to the results of my water. I was told that they only tested TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) and the ideal range for water as it pertains to TDS ranged from 1-10. My TDS was 81! I went on to explain that I used the water in my fish tank as well as for my hot beverages that I drink and I was informed that the water quality is so bad that even if I boiled it and drank it, it would be bad for even me to drink much less my fish tank.
FathomLed graciously filled up 22.5 Gallons of R/O water in 4.4 Gallon Jugs and sent me on my way.
I am just passing on my experience hoping that another newbie like me don't make the same mistake.
I am going to invest in some sort of water filtration for drinking purposes. And from now on I will only use R/O in my fish tank.
Yesterday 2/13/2013 at approx. 4pm I received a call in regards to the results of my water. I was told that they only tested TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) and the ideal range for water as it pertains to TDS ranged from 1-10. My TDS was 81! I went on to explain that I used the water in my fish tank as well as for my hot beverages that I drink and I was informed that the water quality is so bad that even if I boiled it and drank it, it would be bad for even me to drink much less my fish tank.
FathomLed graciously filled up 22.5 Gallons of R/O water in 4.4 Gallon Jugs and sent me on my way.
I am just passing on my experience hoping that another newbie like me don't make the same mistake.
I am going to invest in some sort of water filtration for drinking purposes. And from now on I will only use R/O in my fish tank.
Last edited:
