KurtG wrote on Wed, 29 Nov 2006:
I'm currently mixing salt water for my tank, but as I do this, i gaze out my
window at the ocean and wonder. Wouldn't real Ocean water work better?

Yes.

It would have all the ions, minerals, etc, but it may have some unwanted
bacteria.

There are also lots of miscellaneous organics, so if you collect a lot and
let it sit without filtering it first, you'll wind up with a lot of decomposing
life that pollutes the water.

I live close to the atlantic. I've heard of fish stores in Santa Clara that
send a truck to the ocean every few weeks to collect ocean water.

I live near the Pacific (SF bay area), and a LFS a few miles from me gets a
regular supply of ocean water from Half Moon Bay, a relatively clean town right
on the coast.

I generally do my water changes with 1/2 salt mix and 1/2 natural sea water.

-- Don
__________________________________________________ _____________________________
Don Geddis http://reef.geddis.org/
But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we
are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in
tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the
ocean is flat again.
-- John Maynard Keynes, "A Tract on Monetary Reform", 1923