Ocean Salt water

[pearsont74]

ok...a quick question - is it ok or not to take ocean water to start out my tank? obiviously one would need to test it and all and I'd let it run awhile before adding anything to it (fish ect...). Im just thinking it would be alot easier to to full up a huge live well I have in my boat with fresh salt water and transfer it to my new tank....any thoughts on this?

 

[BillyZ]

I believe many folks do this. I would give the same cautions as I gave with collecting the sand. Be sure there aren't any contaminants in the area. If you've got yourself a boat then I would go out away from any beaches, factories etc.

 

[tripper]

This has been discussed many times and the general concensus is that you would be ok if you went out to sea a couple miles to collect the water. Getting water from too close to shore will contain too many contaminents that you would not want to introduce to your tank. Also, you would have to make sure that your well in your boat doesn't have any gas residue or any other form of pollutant that might infect your water supply. If you can take care of those two issues, I don't see why not.

tripper

 

[swissfish]

Well you need to have your tank running for a while anyway and I think it would be ok if you test the water.
I use filtered oceanwater from my local aquarium and it works well.

 

[pearsont74]

cool..thanks for the info, i know...the search right LOL I should have known that one.
yeah I was goin to go a few miles out and just use it to start out my tank and I have a 50gal live well drum so its clean from oils and gas .
I would think this would mainly help in speeding up my cycling. I'd love to go out into international waters and get my own live rock just for a base- maybe this summer