REAL ocean water... yay or nay?

[gobywankenobi]

i live in huntington beach, california...
not tropical, but nice enough.

i've read that real ocean water, hand collected and let sit for few days for the local plankton to die off, is excellent for the tank... but i'm not sure.

this is california water, not hawaiian, so what do you guys think? i live just a few blocks from the beach (lucky me) and would plan on collecting a bit offshore and away from any rivers, lagoons, drainage, etc.

i thought i'd use it for my weekly 15% water changes.

..and i'd run all my tests on this local ocean first, to be sure of it's parameters!

any thoughts?

[gobywankenobi]

oh hey, i just noticed someone posted a very similar question in the General Reef Discussion forum just last week... (oops!)

i'm gonna go for it. i'll post my results here in a few days...

[manderson0805]

I wouldn't put beach water in my tank...boats, run off, all sorts of pollution in it

[elgordoinavw]

dude down here in san diego alot of people use nsw, the birsch aquarium filters it and uses it at the aquarium in all their displays. i would try the longbeach aquarium they may have somewhere for you to get water

[gobywankenobi]

just an update...

i've had huntington beach seawater, which i collected in a 5 gal arrowhead bottle about sixty feet offshore, in my tank for about two weeks now and everything is going hunky dorey! (read: good.)

i had a small algae bloom, which subsided a day or two later, and my 12 gal nanocube is as clear as i've ever seen it. i didn't go with a full 12 gal water exchange, rather, i've done 2 gal changeouts once a week and plan to continue this as long as i can stand it.

i was a little concerned about using the local ocean water with the recent red tide, but i went for it anyway, out of curiousity. i noticed a few new tiny critters, but nothing significant.

i must state here that my frogspawn and my blue mushrooms have been wider open than i've ever seen them, and, no kidding, the water is REAL clear. also, the macroalgae seems to be growing like gangbusters.

we'll see what happens after another month or so...

[gobywankenobi]

additionally, so far, the only problem has been warming it up 10 degrees (and lugging it up from the beach!) and calcium and a buffer does need to be added, but the Ph is always perfectly 8.2 and the nitrate, nitrite, and ammonia are always a flat zero.

here is a bit of inspiration from Tullock's book, "Natural Reef Aquariums" (which has been something of a bible for me) page 63:

"Aquarists have expressed concern about introducing harmful organisms along with natural seawater. In my experience, it is more likely that parasites will enter the aquarium with their hosts, rather than via other sources. Dire warnings about the hazards of using natural seawater are unfounded... natural seawater is used by professional marine biology labs worldwide."

and he goes on to say,

"Add a gallon of the newly collected seawater to your aquarium immediately upon your return home. The purpose of this is to introduce natural plankton to the system. I have done this, even with plankton concentrated by towing a plankton net and transporting the harvest in a few gallons of aerated water, without the introduction of harmful species."

so it sounded good to me! if anyone has any additional or conflicting information, i'd love to hear it!

[tankgirl2]

I'm in the same area, and was buying NSW from a LFS, collected from Catalina. Then, I tested it and phosphates were very high. So am back to making up SW.

[gobywankenobi]

oh hey, i haven't checked my huntington beach water for phosphates. i should do that...

been using it for a while now, though, without any huge algae problems. maybe my kalk drip is keeping them at bay.

[tankgirl2]

I really liked the idea of NSW, but the phosphate levels nixed the whole idea. I mentioned it to the LFS in the hopes they'd find another source. Another issue is how long the NSW has been stored - apparently a phosphate surge can happen just from having it stored at the LFS?