Tap Water Off The Charts

[marshalls]

i have a 20gal tank with 3 adult platys. my water is off charts. here are the parameters; nitrate-5ppm, nitrate-15ppm, total hardness-0, total chlorine-0, total alkalinity-over300 off the charts, ph-8.2, ammonia-.4, gh-30, kh-high off the charts. i know this doesnt make sense. its pretty much the same in both tanks but my platy in the other tank died today so my only concern is the 20gal. my tap water tests gh-25 and kh-high off the charts also. local pet store tests verified my results. i believe the problem is hard water coming into water treatment plant and theyraise alkalinity to lower hardness. treatment plant has no info on subject. the tank has been up with fish for one week. i know its hard to diagnose this early but the alkalinity and hardness are so far off there is something else causing this. im lost as to what to do. i cant do water changes with tap water. what are my choices other than buying a ro setup

 

[ainsy]

You could find an LFS that sells RO - many do.

 

[ZoddyZod]

what are you using to test your water? If it isn't a liquid test kit then it should be......strips are not at all accurate.

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Marshalls.
If your local water treatment system uses a "lime softener", then what you are seeing would make sense. Lime softeners use a precipitation process to remove calcium and magnesium and can have lime loaded water overflow into the outlet area unless they have a stable bed established. At that point they are also not performing very well as softeners which would explain the GH.
Yes, I have done some water treatment in my life and a stable lime bed can be difficult to establish. I prefer a salt regenerated softener where calcium and magnesium are replaced by sodium in an ion exchange process, but that is far from the cheapest approach for large scale municipal sized softeners.