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What do you guys think. It's in my dinning room. It's a 55 gallon saltwater tank. My very first saltwater tank. I had many freshwater tanks before. What do you guys think a good stock would be?
I swear I'm not intentionally raining on your parade, and I think its great that you're excited about this set up. But I want to be honest, so you know what you're getting into. Filling your tank with tap water has done you in for a lot of headaches in the future, and its going to take a lot of patience before the end of it. Tap water is typically full of phosphate (to preserve the pipes) chloride, silicates, fluoride, ect... these things are the reason why people suggest you buy and RODI unit. All of this translates into some nasty algae and a truly scary cycle. But don't become disheartened, once your done you'll realize it was worth it, and you'll have a tank that is completely 100% your own.
Look at these: Ro/Di and read some of this: Reef keeping 101
This depends entirely on your source water. Me personally, I have great tap water and use it in my reef. It's been up and running for over a year now without any problems at all minus the ones I created through the learning process. I've also never had any algae problems minus a ting diatom outbreak at the beginning.
This is definitely not typical but its not the end of the world with you using tap and indeed many people say that its fine to fill with tap as long as subsequent water changes are done with ro / Di.
I'm with bigred, while some tap water is very good much of it is not. I used it to start my first tank and was hit with massive algae blooms. Needless to say I've bought an rodi and it was close to the best investment I made for my tank.