I know my ground water because I have a bore, I originally wanted to use it for my breeding room because I was blessed with non-oxidizing water. But, heavy commercial market gardens, north east and south east has caused extreme high levels of nitrate in water, unbelievable high amounts, so much so my garden and lawn grow like no tomorrow. When I first moved in 7 years ago to my semi-rural 4.5 acres I was told that scene water had a lot of ground water in it. I rang up the water authorities only to find out that ground water added as a extra was very minimal. I have bought fish from people in Canningvale, Rockingham and many other places and tested the water on many occasions, tank water and tap water from previous curiosity. And turned out to be very similar to mine!.
So many times I see this same argument going around. "I use staight tap water" vs "I always condition".
I believe that a large established system with high levels of both biological matter and bacteria can handle chlorine during 20 to 30% water changes quite easily. Also healthy happy fish in such a system will barely notice the chlorine as it goes by after the change. Thus someone who has a 42k litre system would find dosing onerous and is unlikely to see benefit anyway.
However a new tank setup which has barely had time to start cycling and has a much reduced bioload is far less able to handle chlorine. The chlorine does not have as high a level of organic matter to oxidise so hangs around longer, the fish are more delicate and ammonia levels are higher leading to more toxic chloramines forming. I would recommend conditioning for every new setup for something like three to six months minimum. Even better is aging the water as well for three days or so.
Furthermore modifying other water parameters such as hardness Ph etc is best left to specialist keepers of fish with desired parameters way out the norm. Any inexperienced fish keeper is unlikely to benefit from such modifications unless the local tap water is *way* off spec which in Perth pretty well never happens. The difficulty of dosing for Ph and hardness accurately and consistently removes the minimal benefit for any inexperienced keeper. You're far better off adjusting your fish to your local tap water. That's what most of the shops do anyways, except specialist shops keeping a wide range of tangs that expect most of their customers to raise hardness and thus do so themselves.
If you regard yourself as capable of handling dosing to vary Ph and hardness consistently and accurately to improve conditions for tangs etc then there's nothing at all wrong with that, but it surely isn't for first tank owners.
Thus I would say to any first time tank owner: You have no reason whatever to take samples of your water to the shop. You don't want to be dosing anything except chlorine conditioner anyway so what will you find out? That your tank is not fully cycled? You already know that because you cleaned your two week old filter in tap water. So stop feeding your fish, every scrap you add turns to toxic ammonia. Feed a tiny amount every few days until they start looking ravenous and eat everything, then ramp up to a slightly less tiny amount. Until your filter has cycled you simply can't afford the luxury of feeding anywhere the normal amount. Fish will simply die, starting with the weakest.
And 'the normal amount' for fish in the wild is of course a fraction of what most people feed in tanks. People can afford to drastically overfeed fish because they change tank water frequently. If you want a low maintenance system simply feed a quarter or less than your fish seem to need/want.
I know my ground water because I have a bore, I originally wanted to use it for my breeding room because I was blessed with non-oxidizing water. But, heavy commercial market gardens, north east and south east has caused extreme high levels of nitrate in water, unbelievable high amounts, so much so my garden and lawn grow like no tomorrow. When I first moved in 7 years ago to my semi-rural 4.5 acres I was told that scene water had a lot of ground water in it. I rang up the water authorities only to find out that ground water added as a extra was very minimal. I have bought fish from people in Canningvale, Rockingham and many other places and tested the water on many occasions, tank water and tap water from previous curiosity. And turned out to be very similar to mine!.
Oh yeah... and wtf you doing up at 4am dude, I'm guessing changing 10000 litres of water lol.
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