RO water or treated Tap water?

I use RO because I don't like declorinating the water with chemicals. I also think that my tap water in general has a little too much stuff in it. I have had just about every algae issue you can name in the past, but I don't think it has anything to do with the water. In my case, it had to do with lack of regular ferts, CO2, high light, and too long of a photo period. Now that I have addressed all of these issues, my algae is minimal and what I would consider normal levels.

I use RO water as well. I have a trickle filter which although is somewhat sealed it out-gasses co2 so I try to keep the carbonate hardness fairly low to reduce the amount of co2 I use.

i use treated tap, no real big problems that i've noticed, some algae ATM, but doubtful if at all to do with tap

RO/DI works Great! But it really depends on what's coming out of your tap. If Your tap is Good--then its just a personal choice....

I'm wondering if you guys use any additives like Kent RO Right when you use RO or RO/DI water? I'm going to set up my first planted tank (I have saltwater reef tanks), and am wondering if I should use the same water for my planted tank as I do for my reef tanks. My RO/DI water has 0 tds.

I use RO water with a TDS of 10 and add enough equillibrium to bring the gh up to 3-4.

I use straight hose water treated with Dechlor probably the cheapest dechlorinater on the market.Plus my water is rock hard.

yoink said:

I use RO water with a TDS of 10 and add enough equillibrium to bring the gh up to 3-4.

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For a newbie like me, can you elaborate? How is that water working out for you? What types of treatments are you referring to? (some of those acronyms are new to me ...)

RO is reverse osmosis,

TDS stands for total dissolved solids.

Equillibrium refers to SeaChem's Equillibrium, essentially a GH booster with other stuff in a it.

GH stands for general hardness.

Now you can use your search function for those words.

What are some of the tap water's parameters in terms of pH, hardness?

Treated tapwater shouldn't contain high amounts of organics as it has been treated. If it does, it will encourage algae growth by causing nutrient excess.

It's most likely an imbalance of some sort in the aquarium system. How about giving it some time for the algae to go away on its own? Usually if you plant heavily from the get-go, algae problems are less apparent because plants have a head start.

Changing the water parameters for RO water should be easy for you, since you have been keeping saltwater tanks, which means you know a lot about water properties and how to manipulate pH, GH, KH.