What do you do if your aquarium's GH General Hardness KH Carbonate Hardness levels are at 60GH and 180KH?

Answer 1

This probably means that your local tap water is *extremely* terrible, or you've been adding bad tap water into a tank for years and letting any excess water just evaporate and you've not been doing any water changes. What do you do about it? Are any fish alive in there at all? If there are fish alive in there, then if you do anything about it too quickly, they will die (the shock of 'good water' can actually kill them). If I had fish in that quality of water I would: 1) Get a very clean bucket (NO SOAP, EVER!) and fill it most of the way with some of the tank water. 2) Net out the fish from the aquarium into the bucket (if your fish require a heater, put the heater in the bucket). 3) Empty all of the water out of the tank down your sink (or toilet, or onto your lawn (if you don't care that much about your grass)) 4) Fill the tank with lukewarm water. 5) Treat the new tank water with anti-chlorine, anti-chloramine, and water stabilizers. 6) Get some 1 quart bags. Roll the tops of the bags down around the outside of the bags (to create an air pocket). 7) Fill the bags part way with water from your bucket. Net a few small fish, or one large fish into each of the bags, then placing the bags gently into your aquarium, floating the bags in the water (that's the purpose of the air pocket). 8) Replace the heater into your tank. 9) Wait for a while until your aquarium has heated back up to a reasonably warm temperature (if you don't heat your aquarium, just ignore the adive about the heater). 10) Using a 1/8 cup, dipper a bit of the aquarium water into the plastic bags. Then dipper some of the water out of the bags into the bucket (or straight into the sink or toilet... DO NOT PUT THIS WATER BACK INTO YOUR TANK! 11) Repeat step 10 every 15-30 minutes for 2-3 hours. 12) After you have acclimated your fish to the new aquarium water, net them out of the bags and put them back into the aquarium. After such a drastic process it should be expected that you will lose some of your fish. Remember that this is free advice, and as such you follow it at your own risk. A less invasive method would be to buy buffering solutions from your Local Fish Store, or to put peat moss into your filter/into your tank, or other chemically balancing things, but beware, anything you do has the potential to harm your fish (not to mention it might get expensive).