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Has Anyone considered using our Ocean"s Water???

I have considered using our ocean's water for my water change.. Has anyone used here used it or now someone who has?
What type of beneifts have they had or yourself ? Or what negative things occured to the tanks?

I have a friend who does a 30 gallon water change with water from AC's ocean and he says that his sps pylops are extended 24/7 . He said his sps's have never looked that good and has had great growth rate as well..

So thats why I'm asking to see if someone else has had success like him.
 

SeahorseKeeper

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Some people have used it with great success. I don't make it down to the shore enough to contemplate it. Here is a link to someone who lives in Long Island that uses NSW. Paul B
 
Go for it.

Just don't get water immediately after a rain storm...lots of bad run off from our lawns, cars, etc.

Only other caution is if you have captive bred fish, they are not exposed to the same wild fauna from the ocean. Clownfish being part of the damsel family I wouldn't worry too much (unless you have like $500 fish or something) but I would definitely NOT use ocean water for captive bred seahorses.

Paul out of Long Island has long had success with ocean water.


>>>krista beat me...
 
As Seahorsekeeper said, PaulB has been doing so for years. The consciencious marine aquarist has a section in the book about it; my understanding is you want to keep it in the dark and consider chlorinating and de-chlorinating it to avoid pests. That said, i believe (believe, not am certain) PaulB has used the water without chlorinating & de-chlorinating, successfully.
 

mnat

Officer Emeritus
Staff member
Moderator
If you have access to a boat, you can collect is a bit farther off shore which will decrease the amount of nasty stuff and run off in the salt water.
 
I'm gonna go Sunday at high tide and grab 5 gal of our natural seawater. I'll start with 5 gal and see what happens.
 
So I went out yesterday @ high tide and collected 15 gal of our oceans water.
Got the water home and tested it. Here are my results from the ocean water
Ph: 8
Alk: 8
Cal : 360
Nit: 0
Nitrate:0
Phos: 0
Salt: 1.023

So i used the water for my water change. So far I saw nothing different with corals or fish. I will be doing another water change next Friday again.
 
So I went out yesterday @ high tide and collected 15 gal of our oceans water.
Got the water home and tested it. Here are my results from the ocean water
Ph: 8
Alk: 8
Cal : 360
Nit: 0
Nitrate:0
Phos: 0
Salt: 1.023

So i used the water for my water change. So far I saw nothing different with corals or fish. I will be doing another water change next Friday again.

Sounds crazy & I'm a big fan of crazy!!! Please keep updating with your results and best of luck.
 
I have to get a mag test kit. So that I can see the results are.

Any recommendation on the which test kit to buy to test mag.
 
Is their a reason why 30 miles Jim. I don't want to continue doing this if I'm gonna harm the tank.

Just to try to avoid any contaminants from run off, and other pollution sources that are close to shore(outfall pipes, etc). Even at that distance there's no guarantee's. I'd go farther, but that's about the maximum distance I'll go in my boat. If you're going to collect it, do it on an incoming tide, when it's near high tide from a rock jetty.
 
. If you're going to collect it, do it on an incoming tide, when it's near high tide from a rock jetty.

Thanx Jim for the advice. Luckily I did do it on high tide off the jetty.
The wife said I have one to many hobbies to get a boat as well. Lol.
 

Tazmaniancowboy

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
So i used the water for my water change. So far I saw nothing different with corals or fish. I will be doing another water change next Friday again.
Tagging along on this. Good luck and keep us posted. What do you keep in the tank?
 

TanksNStuff

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Hmm... here's to hoping you have great success. Maybe that will give us all a reason/excuse to buy a boat! ;)

"Hey honey... I need to get NSW for my water change, so I need to buy a boat." Wonder how that will go? Will probably fly over like a lead balloon.
 
Petco has an exclusive contract with a company that specializes in collecting NSW and filtering it. Carib Sea also does the same thing.

This water in my eyes in superior to mixes i have used.

I have some really expensive clownfish that i keep in this water and have never had problems. If i could collect from our ocean i would reccomend running it with carbon and UV before using it in the tank.

The only thing that is bad is that if you have anything over 80 gallons water changes from petco or carib sea water are expensive!
 
Reefer nets. If I were to process the NSW thru a UV Light wouldn't it kill all the benifical stuff like the phytoplankton and zooplankton that's in the water colum?
 

magic

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Hmm... here's to hoping you have great success. Maybe that will give us all a reason/excuse to buy a boat! ;)

"Hey honey... I need to get NSW for my water change, so I need to buy a boat." Wonder how that will go? Will probably fly over like a lead balloon.

Maybe we can do a "group buy";)

Bob
 
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