For most fresh water aquarium uses people simply take water out of the tap in the house, add some dechlorinator and salt, may be let it sit for awhile then use for a water change. Or they get the water, use the dechlorinator then top up the tank. Is that something that you can do with a marine tank? No.

The reason is that the water used to make up synthetic salt or for evaporation top up needs to be pure water. Any contaminants can cause slight or major problems, depending on what they are. The more common ones that can cause on going slight problems are nitrate and phosphate. Then you get more major issues with things like copper, since most house piping is copper and it is highly toxic to invertebrates, or organics such as pesticides and insecticides.

Some cities water is suitable to use for the most part, with Melbourne being an example. However, the issue then is you do not have any control over the quality of the water that comes out of the tap. If something changes with the water supply, such as maintenence or the water treatment plant, back washing of the piping etc., then suddenly the water quality has changed, with the possiblity of it being far worse than anything that should go near a marine aquarium. And this does happen, rarely, but people do loose a lot of livestock due to this problem. It may be rare, but all it takes is a water change or top up after this event has happened and all your hard work, passion, time and money is lost. Is that worth it?

In the whole scheme of things, it doesn't cost that much to either purchase correctly purified water, or the equipment to purify it yourself.

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