natural sea water

[coastal]

What needs to be done to natural sea water to make it acceptable for aquarium use?

 

[liquid]

Hi coastal and

:welcome:

I'mgoing to move this to our general discussion forum so that others might help with this question.

Shane

 

[Anonymous]

most places that offer NSW have already filtered it to make it ready for home use. Are you trying to take NSW and filter it yourself to make it useable??

 

[Anonymous]

I've used NSW that has basically been sponge filtered and heated up (it's from CA, only about 60 degrees). That's about it.

 

[coastal]

Yes I went about 3 miles off shore yesterday and got 55 gallons (in dense fog ,good thing my gps worked good) I brought it home and ran it through a uv and then carbon ,I hope thats all it needs.

 

[K]

3 miles offshore should be perfect provided there is no big sewage/pollution beside it. Personally if the water is not from a dodgy area I would not bother using carbon on it.

 

[coastal]

I will give the new water time to get to room temp then in it goes! I added about 15 gallon last night . For a 500 gallon system that is just a drop in the bucket. If natural sea water works for me I will collect it often weather permitting.

 

[dgasmd]

Where are you collecting it? I ask bec ause in South Florida most people use NSW and do nithing to it at all. Heck, I don't even know of anyone that actually goes through the trouble of going out in a boat to collect it. All the collecting trucks here just go to a nice and clean inlet and wait for the highest tide and pump it in from there. They suply all the stores you buy corals from and all the service companies get it from there too. I filled my 900g system with it and the only thing I noticed in it after testing it was a trace of PO4. I am getting a 300g tank to store water for changes so I have the truck come by only once every other month or so. I will run a little phosban reactor in it just because of the PO4 and that is it. I do 150g water changes monthly in a 900g SPS system.

 

[coastal]

I am doing my collecting in my front yard 3 miles out Emerald Isle NC .

 

[coastal]

The sea water was worth the time to collect . My tort has never been more purple and the pagoda looks like zoes fully extended not to mention everthing else and the list is long are flouishing just with one 55 gallon natural sea water upgrade (500 gallon system) Thats alitle over 10 pecent wow!

 

[Anonymous]

I've heard that some of the big public aquariums that use NSW only do so after having stored it unheated in the dark for a while to let all the organisms die off. Not completely sure why, but I think it's partly to do with avoiding the introduction of parasites, and partly to do with avoiding putting too much strain on the protein skimmers.

This might be a slightly different matter if you're running a relatively nutrient-high tank (with feather dusters, LPS etc) where your corals etc can use the nutrients/plankton. Also less of a problem if you have a powerful skimmer. Small waterchanges reduce the danger as well. I'd avoid this as an option for SPS minimum nutrient tanks though, given the amount of life in coastal NSW (unless you go through the storage phase).

I hasten to add I have no personal experience of this, but I'm reasonably sure I read this on a board last year.

 

[Anonymous]

Not sure where you are but here in San Diego the Birch Aquarium filters NSW for the public. They pump it in from the ocean and run it through several different filters. I take it straight from their spigot, drop a heater in the bucket, and dump it in my tank.

 

[Anonymous]

I'd take your word for it SBGRAD24, given your specific examples over my half-remembered anecdotage!

 

[bubbletip1]

Some folks in our club (BRS-Boston Reefers Society) run only NSW…it is collected off shore of NH/Main and is run through carbon during the collection, we need to slightly adjust the alk and sp (and obviously temp) before we can use it in our tanks. I do not personally use it but we have a LFS that even carries it to supply the need. The folks who do use here have nothing but good things to say about it......