I wanted to see if anyone here uses natural sea water vrs. homemade? Personally I use Natural Seawater that collect at the local inlet on incoming tide. I thought this would be an intereseting thread.
I know of people who use natural seawater, but they collect it far offshore, and put it through a "cleaning" process that includes bleach and a diatom filter...
IMO there's too much potential for importing unwanted pathogens, and things like hydroids.
I live in San Diego about 5 miles from the ocean. The oceanograpic institute at UCSD has a saltwater tap at the end of the pier which the public can use.
I don't use it because I hate lugging buckets of water around. Since I have a RO/DI sytem at home, I find it much more easy to make SW using packaged salts.
Now, if I had a hose from the ocean to my house, that would be a different story.
I have several animals including Flame Scallops (which were caught locally) that filter feed, I use natural seawater because these animals would die of starvation without it. What do you do if you have filter feeders?
