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Hey Turtle Talk, am having some issues with hard water. The weird thing is that, though the water in our apartment is very hard (leaves nasty orange stains on our shower and sinks), I have been buying 2.5gal bottled water jugs for the tank (I bought a purifier for our tap but the water was still coming out hard) but the tests on the water are still saying it's very hard. What else could be making it hard?

I am noticing both turtles' plastrons turning orange - could that be hard water stains?

Should I do more frequent 100% water changes? How often? (I have a 60gallon tank)

Anything else I can do to mitigate the hard water? It's gunking up my filter tubes too.

Thanks for any insight!

The orange stain indicate that have a lot of dissolved iron in your water supply. This is supposedly harmless but ugly and most ordinary water filters will have a hard time removing it. You can try adding activated carbon to your tank filter to see if that helps.

Your water from a well? You probabaly wanna get your water tested for iron content and pH. Depending what you find you will need to get a certain filter installed for the whole house to get rid of the problem.

Agreed this is either iron or rust in your water supply.