Complete newbie and clueless!

[Titchyfeep]

Nitrite was 0 but ammonia and nitrate was high so I’ve done a water change.

[LookoutTrout]

In that case you should be on daily testing and changes until ammonia is under control.
There are charts which tell you how much ammonia is toxic depending on your ph, you can have a look for them if you like or just aim for zero.

[Titchyfeep]

Thankfully ammonia went back to zero after the water change and the nitrate has come down as well. Will check it daily.

[LookoutTrout]

Nitrate will not usually be zero unless you have a lot of plants, most tap water has a fair amount of it but sometimes none

[Titchyfeep]

I wasn’t expecting nitrate to be 0. right before I got fish I was concerned that my test was showing 0 nitrate and was told not to worry about it. I then took out my plants and it shot up a lot (think it was 20ppm) today it looked like somewhere between 20-40 but it might have been affected by the fertiliser. After the water change it is now about 10pm.

[Vale!]

[no need to reply to this ...]

Just popping in to remind you and threadmates that there are some 'vital statistics' for your tapwater upthread at 6:01am on Thursday 12th October, should you need to refer to them.

Exactly how hard does your LFS (Local Fish Shop) think your tapwater is then, I wonder!? It could be in an adjacent supply zone, I suppose, but even then the parameters shouldn't be wildly different.

Anyway .... As you were ... Carry on .... etc.

[Titchyfeep]

[no need to reply to this ...]

Just popping in to remind you and threadmates that there are some 'vital statistics' for your tapwater upthread at 6:01am on Thursday 12th October, should you need to refer to them.

Exactly how hard does your LFS (Local Fish Shop) think your tapwater is then, I wonder!? It could be in an adjacent supply zone, I suppose, but even then the parameters shouldn't be wildly different.

Anyway .... As you were ... Carry on .... etc.

I don’t know what they think the hardness is. I found the full visit rather overwhelming if I’m honest. I just find everyone’s advice so conflicting and I feel like a total failure no matter what I do and I’m going to end up killing fish because it gets to complicated. For the sake of roughly £10 I will buy a gh and kh test kit but it’s probably pointless now. It’s funny the very first time I went to a lfs after telling the kids they could have fish a member of the public very enthusiastically told me not to start out with tetras and banged on about platys for about 30mins and that he had kept them for years. he was local so likely same water and he didn’t seem to think it was a problem. I had sort of forgotten about the conversation as it was several months ago and a different shop from the one I went to when I bought fish. If I do keep these fish alive I now have no idea what to keep with them and I don’t really want to only have 6 fish.

[Vale!]

Yes - it's pointless for you to spend money on water hardness test kits unless you were planning artificially to harden your tapwater and wanted to reach specific values of hardness.

Given the nature of your fish I think I may understand why your member-of-the-public lecturer said what he said ; but that doesn't necessarily mean s/he was right.

It's dawned on me that my contributions are, yet again, making things more confusing for you. So I'll shut up. Apologies.

[LookoutTrout]

Hardness test kits are probably worth buying even if just once, the water from your tap may change hardness in your tank. At the least if you do have problems with the fish you keep then you can check to see if that's a likely factor and either add minerals or but different fish.
Vale! is careful about what he says and I'd assume him to be correct about chemistry but I'd understand if someone finds it confusing.
I was told my water was too soft for livebearers but by that time I'd already bought six from the local shop, three of them died within a few weeks and the others did much better. I didn't rush out to replace them but decided not to buy more.
I've also had soft water fish die out fairly quickly, ten Indian glass fish all went in a few weeks. I've no idea why but chalked it down as experience that I won't try again.
If I read Vale!'s post correctly then you have very soft water which most fish won't like. This might be great for some very unusual stock or it might mean you should add some minerals to suit the fish you want.
The softness might mean you get problems with PH in the future as low Kh can lead to PH swings, that doesn't mean you need to fix it now but it's one of the many things you might learn along the way.
Nobody is perfect and there's always conflicting advice, much of things said about keeping fish is not scientifically verified. I'm going to carry on making mistakes but hopefully fewer as time goes on.

[Titchyfeep]

I just feel really stupid and obviously fail to understand the correlation between ph and water hardness. I honestly thought if my water was soft my ph would be between 6-7 but it was as high as 8.2 a few weeks ago. I don’t know if something in my tank is affecting it a lot, I don’t know if whatever is causing that could be making the water harder. I have never put anything in the tank other than seachem prime and seachem aquavitro. I have gravel substrate and a couple of ornaments and a bubble volcano. I don’t know if I should give these fish away and start again.