Tap Water - Amquel Plus - New Tank - Invertables - Problem

[schabiazabi]

I'm setting up a new 55G marine tank and I ran into trouble. After 20 years of not having a tank I "came back" 2 months ago. I'm using tap water in my tanks. Someone on another forum suggested to use Amquel Plus or Prime for my tap water. I was doing it and everything was fine (freshwater and saltwater) except for one thing: I bought snails and they died 6 hours after. My cleaner shrimp also died after 2 days. There was no way for me to figure why they died as my experience in saltwater was minimal.

Today I think I know why my snails died. Few minutes of research took me to Amazon to check out Amquel Plus reviews. There is one negative review there and the guy talks about how Amquel Plus killed his inverts. My speculation is this is what killed my little guys. The worse thing now is that I do not know how to proceed with my new tank setup and other tanks. How can I use tap water for new setups and water changes. Is there anything better that will make tap water safe without killing inverts and corals? Or maybe Amquel Plus is ok, but I have to lower the dosage?

Please help as I'm stuck. As of now I have the tank setup with tap water in there. No chemicals, no salt as of now.

Thanks in advance.

[Original Fin]

Water conditioners have no place in reef systems. Tap water is also a big no no. It can contain all kinds of nasties, including copper, which is just a likely a cause for your dead inverts.

What you need is an RODI filter for your tap water. Decent 4 to 5 stage units can be had for under $200. Check out Filter guys.com, Bulk Reef Supply.com, and Buckeye Field Supply.com.


There's a lot more besides source water you should read up on before proceeding. Pretty much everything you need to know is here. Read all the "sticky" threads in these forums, and hit us up with any questions you may have.

Welcome to Reefland, and happy reefing!

[schabiazabi]

Thanks for help. I have a feeling 50% of my problems will be solved when I install this unit.

Would this product do the trick: pure waterclub.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=323

(please remove the space between pure waterclub as I noticed you do not want backlinks here)

It's a 6 stage unit.

[FoMoCo Master Tech]

Tap water and/ or the use of chemical treatments could have caused the deaths like noted above but those things could only be part of the problem. I definitely wouldn't recommend using either as well.

What equpiment are you using? Was it bought new or used? Are you using live rock? Where did it come from? Did you allow your tank to cycle? If so, how long? Did you acclimate the livestock? If so, how did you do it? Where you testing you water for ammonia, nitrites, nitrates and Ph? If so, what were the measurements?
Any additional information will be helpful because there are so many other reasons your snails and shrimp died.
If you haven't already read this, there is an excellent article on Setting Up a FOWLR Aquarium. I followed this process and had no issues.

[Original Fin]

Never heard of that brand. Honestly, that stuff looks to be on the cheap side. If you do your product searches looking for the lowest prices, you're bound to find all the crap products.

[schabiazabi]

Tank: 30G (currently I'm setting up 55G and that's when the issue came up).
New
Live Rock from LFS. Fiji rock.
Tank cycled, but ammonia is back at 1.0
Livestock was acclimated. I have one Queen Angel 3". Fish is doing great for a month now.

Nitrite 0 or 0.5
Nitrate 0.5
I only added Amquel Plus and Tetra Fresh Start about 2 months ago as I converted this from freshwater to saltwater. There were about 10 20% water changes since then.

Never heard of that brand. Honestly, that stuff looks to be on the cheap side. If you do your product searches looking for the lowest prices, you're bound to find all the crap products.

I read about this product on some other board and I went and compared the filters used. When I realized the filters are the same and the product price is different due to features I do not need I selected this filter. Maybe it looks cheap, but I just want a device that will product clean water without all the other features.

[Original Fin]

About cheap RODI units, I have one word for you...FLOOD. The quality of the hardware is of the utmost importance.

Your tank is cycling again, or never cycled in the first place. You need to give it a couple weeks after Ammonia and nitrites hit zero before you begin stocking. A queen angel needs a way bigger tank than a 30, or a 55 for that matter. Suggest you remove all fish/inverts from your system immediately and find an established halfway home for them till you get your tank straightened out. Otherwise, they have little chance for survival.

To be frank, it sounds like you're going about this all wrong so far. Marine systems are not at all forgiving to first timers that are trying to learn as they go. It's better to do all your research and planning well in advance. I speak from personal experience.

One thing you can do that might be a little easier than scouring the Internet, would be to join your local reef club and reach out for a mentor. Whatever you do, never assume advice from the LFS is food advice. Get a second opinion from reef forums before acting on it.

[Original Fin]

IDK where that unhappy emoticon came from?? Oops.

I'm glad to offer my help, if you want it...sorry about being all doom and gloom about it...I can be a little too frank sometimes. Don't want to discourage you.

[schabiazabi]

I'm glad to offer my help, if you want it...sorry about being all doom and gloom about it...I can be a little too frank sometimes. Don't want to discourage you.

Thanks for help. I rarely get discouraged and I'm reading as much as I can. So far I learned the basics, but few things "slipped" as I never researched for a second opinion. It was this forum thread about fish bath by leebca that convinced me to open an account and ask for questions here.