Aquarium Supplies in Perth

Perth is the one Australian city where water treatment gear stops being optional for most tanks. Gallery Aquatica is a reef and freshwater aquarium store in Tingalpa, Brisbane, and all of our dry goods post over to Western Australia. We have no shop in WA, and the livestock rules are tighter here than anywhere else we ship, so both are worth reading before you order.

What Perth tap water means for your tank

Perth carries the highest dissolved mineral load of any Australian capital supply. Water Corporation draws on 43 surface water sources, 92 groundwater sources, two desalination plants and a groundwater replenishment scheme, then blends them. The groundwater component is where the hardness comes from: the Gnangara and Jandakot mounds are high in calcium and magnesium. Desalinated seawater, at roughly a third of supply, comes back much softer, and dam runoff sits in between.

For an aquarium that means the tap is carrying a heavy mineral load before you have added anything. Hard-water species like African cichlids will actually take to it, but a reef tank, a planted tank or any soft-water fish needs that load stripped out first. On the harder Perth zones an RO/DI unit is not a nice-to-have, it is the baseline, and because incoming TDS is so high your carbon and DI resin work harder and need replacing more often than they would anywhere else in the country. Buying resin and cartridges ahead is sensible here.

Perth is not one water, it is about 28

The blend is not the same across the city, and the spread is much wider than most people expect. Water Corporation runs roughly 28 supply localities, and each gets a different mix of groundwater, dam water and desalinated seawater. Hardness runs from around 29 milligrams per litre in some southern hills zones up to about 228 in the northern suburbs, against a city-wide average near 96.

Read that again, because it changes what you should buy. The softest Perth zones are softer than Sydney. The hardest are close to seven times that, and those are the hardest mains supply anywhere in the country. Advice written for "Perth water" is therefore wrong for a large slice of Perth in one direction or the other. Before you size an RO/DI unit or work out how much DI resin to keep on the shelf, find your own locality's figure. Someone in the northern suburbs on groundwater will chew through resin at a rate that would look absurd to someone in the hills, and a keeper in the hills who buys for the worst case has spent money they did not need to.

The gear that suits Perth water

• An RO/DI setup as the foundation for reef, planted and soft-water tanks. This is the single most useful thing on the harder Perth zones.
• Spare carbon and DI resin, because high incoming TDS exhausts them faster here than elsewhere.
• A TDS meter and test kits to track your own suburb's numbers and know when resin is spent.
• Supplements and buffers to rebuild water to a controlled target after purifying, or to hold reef alkalinity.

• RO/DI Filtration
• Filter Media
• Test Kits & Monitors
• Supplements & Buffers

Shipping to Perth

Dry goods ship to Perth with Australia Post or Aramex, so all of the water gear above reaches you normally. Livestock is more restricted by law: live algae and snails cannot be sent to Western Australia at all, and fish ship Airport to Airport by custom arrangement, with remote WA postcodes quoted individually. 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 Perth?

Yes. All dry goods, including RO/DI gear, ship to Perth via Australia Post or Aramex. Live algae and snails cannot be sent to Western Australia by law, and fish ship Airport to Airport by arrangement.

Is Perth tap water hard?

On average yes, near 96 mg/L, and Perth has the highest TDS of any capital city supply. But the spread across the city is large, from around 29 mg/L in some southern hills zones to about 228 mg/L in the northern suburbs, so your own locality matters more than the city figure.

Which Perth suburbs have the hardest water?

The northern suburbs, where groundwater from the Gnangara mound makes up more of the blend, reaching around 228 mg/L. Zones with a larger share of desalinated or dam water run much softer. Water Corporation reports by supply locality, so check yours.

Do I need an RO/DI unit in Perth?

For a reef, planted or soft-water tank on the harder zones, effectively yes. Expect your carbon and DI resin to need replacing more often than in softer cities, so keep spares on hand. If you are in one of the softer hills zones, your resin will last considerably longer than the Perth reputation suggests.