Aquarium Supplies in Sydney

Sydney tap water sits in an awkward middle. Not soft enough to drop a Caridina colony into without thinking about it, not hard enough to hold an African cichlid tank steady on its own. Gallery Aquatica ships aquarium gear to Sydney from our store in Tingalpa, Brisbane. There is no shop of ours in New South Wales, but the equipment, treatments and test gear all post to you, and it is worth knowing what your supply is doing before you fill a tank with it.

What Sydney tap water means for your tank

Sydney's supply comes mostly from surface dams and lands right on the line between soft and moderately hard. Hardness usually reads somewhere near 57 milligrams per litre with a pH around 7.5 to 7.8, so it carries a bit more mineral and buffering than the very soft capitals like Melbourne or Hobart. For a general community tank that is fine as it comes. Where it matters is at the two extremes: soft-water specialists like Caridina shrimp, killifish or wild-caught dwarf cichlids often want it softer than the tap gives, and a reef tank wants none of the tap mineral profile at all. Both point at the same answer, which is starting from purified water and building up to the target you actually want.

Find out which plant feeds your suburb

There is no single Sydney number, and this trips people up more than the hardness figure itself. Sydney Water treats the city through nine water filtration plants. Prospect is by far the largest and covers more than eighty per cent of Sydney on its own, but Woronora, Illawarra, Nepean, Macarthur, North Richmond and Orchard Hills each run as their own delivery system with their own results.

So a keeper in the Sutherland Shire on the Woronora system is not reading the same water as someone in the inner west on Prospect, even though both would find the same city average quoted at them. Sydney Water publishes results per delivery system in its Daily Drinking Water Quality Report, which is open data on Data.NSW and includes hardness, pH and mineral content. Look up your own system once and write the numbers down. It costs nothing and it tells you whether you are dosing for 45 milligrams per litre or 65, which is the difference between a shrimp tank that breeds and one that sulks.

The gear that suits Sydney water

• A test kit or TDS meter first, so you know your own suburb's numbers rather than a city average.
• A water conditioner to handle the chlorine for a straightforward freshwater tank.
• An RO/DI setup for a reef tank, or for a shrimp or soft-water breeding tank where you want to remineralise back to a precise, low target.
• Supplements and buffers to set hardness and alkalinity where your livestock wants them.

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

Shipping to Sydney

Dry goods travel to Sydney with Australia Post or Aramex, and New South Wales carries no state restriction on live algae or snails, so the livestock side is open here too, with fish handled Airport to Airport by arrangement. Dispatch timing, packing method and the live-arrival guarantee are all set out 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 Sydney?

Yes. All dry goods ship to Sydney via Australia Post or Aramex, and livestock is available to New South Wales under our freight arrangement.

Is Sydney tap water hard or soft for an aquarium?

It sits on the border, near 57 mg/L hardness, so it is softer than Perth or Adelaide but harder than Melbourne. Community tanks manage on it once dechlorinated. Soft-water species and reef tanks are better started from purified water.

Which water filtration plant supplies my Sydney suburb?

Sydney Water runs nine, and Prospect covers more than eighty per cent of the city. Woronora, Illawarra, Nepean, Macarthur, North Richmond and Orchard Hills serve the rest as separate delivery systems. Results for each are published in Sydney Water's Daily Drinking Water Quality Report on Data.NSW, so you can read your own system rather than a city average.

Do I need an RO/DI unit in Sydney?

For a reef tank yes, and for shrimp or soft-water breeding it gives you a clean base to remineralise from. Many general freshwater keepers manage with a good conditioner instead.