Aquarium Supplies in Hobart

Hobart has the gentlest starting water in the country, which is an advantage right up until you try to keep something that wants minerals in it. Gallery Aquatica is a reef and freshwater aquarium store in Tingalpa, Brisbane, and our dry-goods range posts down to Tasmania. We have no shop in the state, and the livestock rules for TAS are tighter than most, so that part is worth reading before you order.

What Hobart tap water means for your tank

Hobart has the softest mains water of any Australian capital. Supplied from protected mountain catchments, hardness averages down around 10 to 24 milligrams per litre with total dissolved solids near 49 and a pH close to neutral. In plain terms there is almost nothing dissolved in it before you start, which is a genuine advantage and a small catch at the same time.

The advantage is that soft, low-mineral water is exactly what planted tanks, shrimp and soft-water community fish want, and it makes RO/DI treatment very efficient for a reef tank because the unit has so little to remove. The catch is that water this soft carries very little buffering, so it holds pH poorly and gives hard-water species nothing to work with. A reef tank, or any African cichlid or livebearer setup, needs minerals and alkalinity built back up to a target rather than stripped out. It is chlorinated, so a freshwater tank still needs the chlorine dealt with on fill. The supply is also fluoridated at around 0.9 milligrams per litre, which RO/DI removes along with everything else.

Greater Hobart is one system out of 59

If you are inside Greater Hobart, the figures above describe your water well. If you are anywhere else in Tasmania, treat them with caution. TasWater runs 59 separate drinking water systems across the state, serving more than two hundred thousand households and businesses, and Greater Hobart is just one of them. Smaller regional systems draw on different sources and can look quite different at the tap.

This is easier to check here than in most states. TasWater publishes a water quality portal that reports results by system, updated monthly, and flags any exceedance against the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines. Find your system, read your own hardness and pH rather than the Hobart figure, and you will know whether you are remineralising from near zero or from something with a bit more in it. TasWater also publishes an annual drinking water quality report, and the Tasmanian Department of Health publishes a state-wide one, if you want the longer view rather than this month's numbers.

Soft water drifts, so watch pH

The practical consequence of almost no buffering is that pH moves on you. A tank that sat at 7.0 last month can slide down as organic acids build between water changes, and topping up with water that has no alkalinity in it does nothing to arrest that. Test more often than you would on a hard-water supply, and if you keep anything that cares, build alkalinity into your top-up routine rather than treating it as an occasional correction.

The gear that suits Hobart water

• Buffers and mineral supplements to build hardness and alkalinity up for reef and hard-water species, the key step on water this soft.
• A water conditioner to handle the chlorine for a simple freshwater tank.
• An RO/DI setup for a reef tank, which runs very efficiently here given how little is in the tap to begin with.
• A test kit to keep pH and hardness where your livestock wants them, since soft water drifts easily.

• Supplements & Buffers
• Water Treatments & Conditioners
• RO/DI Filtration
• Test Kits & Monitors

Shipping to Hobart

Dry goods ship to Hobart with Australia Post or Aramex, so all of the water gear reaches you normally, though remote Tasmanian postcodes may need an individual freight quote. Livestock is restricted by law: live algae and snails cannot be sent to Tasmania at all, and fish ship Airport to Airport by custom arrangement. The full rules, including packing and the live-arrival guarantee, are on our freighting and packing page, and everywhere we deliver is on the Australia-wide shipping page.

Common questions

Do you deliver aquarium supplies to Hobart?

Yes. All dry goods ship to Hobart via Australia Post or Aramex, with remote postcodes quoted individually. Live algae and snails cannot be sent to Tasmania by law, and fish ship Airport to Airport by arrangement.

Is Hobart tap water soft?

Very. It is the softest mains water of any Australian capital, drawn from protected mountain catchments, with hardness around 10 to 24 mg/L. Great for soft-water species, but reef and hard-water tanks need minerals added back.

How do I check my own Tasmanian water quality?

TasWater runs 59 separate drinking water systems and publishes a water quality portal with results per system, updated monthly, including any exceedance against the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines. Greater Hobart is only one of those systems, so if you are outside the city your numbers may differ from the Hobart figure.

Do I need an RO/DI unit in Hobart?

For a reef tank it still gives the cleanest, most consistent baseline, and it runs very efficiently here because the incoming water is already so low in minerals. Many freshwater keepers can manage with a conditioner and, where needed, remineralisation.