Sea Water?

The thought was to replace filters skimmers and such with piped in sea water. Just wondering how a reef would do with type of setup. Figured someone had tried it out.

 

In order to "be safe", you would have to plumb a couple of miles out and at least 80' down to avoid any contaminates. By the time you finish that job, you could have bought a complete system 3x over. It is not recommended to take NSW straight from the shore, or even a couple of feet away from shore. The guy who supplies my LFS with NSW says he travels out a couple of miles out and then goes at least 80' down to get the water. If you do decide to go through with your idea, you will need to filter the NSW before it hits your system. Either way, its alot of money on equipment. Good luck with whatever you choose and keep us posted.



Luna

 

what size tank are we talking about?

 

I really dont think you have to be so cautious as to get water so far off shore and 80 feet down. But again, think about where you are getting your stuff from. Don't go to the local marina and get it, go to a high flow/low impact area. Atlantis Marine World in Riverhead, NY uses huge 3k gallon trucks to collect water from a local inlet for their 20k gallon reef and 120k gallon shark tank. I'm fairly sure all they do is warm it and skimm it.

 

When you have thousands of dollars in your tank, you cant take that chance. Luna

 

I'm sure there are laws against siphoning out the water from the shoreline as well. I wouldn't want to with all the pollution anyway. But it's another thing to consider. The guys that provide the Catalina water have permits from the Catalina island to do so, and they go about 8 miles out from the island to get cleaner water.