Central, LA tap water
Supplied mostly by Baton Rouge Water Company, plus 1 other utility. Here's what the water means for your fish.
Disinfectant
Chlorine or chloramine
Utilities here use chlorine or chloramine, depending on which one serves your address. Chlorine slowly gases off from standing water; chloramine doesn't.
Safety for fish and shrimp
Ammonia (with conditioner)
Estimate0.11–0.78 ppm (Low)
Typical 0.49 ppm
This is what a conditioner frees when it breaks the chloramine apart. A cycled filter clears it within a day.
Estimated from the chloramine level Baton Rouge Water Company reports (2025).
Nitrate (NO₃)
Area estimate0.1–11 ppm (Low)
Typical 0.9 ppm
Low, so water changes lower your tank's nitrate well.
Area estimate from nearby wells: USGS well samples in your state (2000–2021).
Copper at home taps (first draw)
Up to 0.04 ppm (Low)
The 90th percentile of first-draw samples from homes: water that sat in household pipes for at least six hours.
Not detected in testing. Water that sits in household pipes overnight can still pick some up.
Published by your utility: Baton Rouge Water Company's 2025 water quality report.
Chlorine or chloramine at the tap
0.4–3.2 ppm
Typical 2 ppm
At tap levels, chlorine and chloramine are toxic to fish, shrimp and the bacteria in a filter. Water conditioners are made for this range.
Published by your utility: Baton Rouge Water Company's 2025 water quality report.
Water chemistry
General hardness
0–52 ppm
Typical 26 ppm
Soft. Good for tetras, rasboras and most shrimp. Livebearers, snails and African cichlids prefer harder water.
Published by your utility: Baton Rouge Water Company's 2025 water quality report.
Carbonate hardness (alkalinity)
121–212 ppm
Typical 143 ppm
Strong buffering. pH stays steady and hard to lower without RO water.
From EPA monitoring data, measured before treatment (2012–2019).
pH
5.2–8.9
Typical 7
Most community fish do well here. Stable water matters more than the exact number.
From Baton Rouge Water Company's 2025 water quality report; EPA monitoring data, measured before treatment (2012–2025).
Total dissolved solids
Area estimate52–323 ppm
Typical 203 ppm
A rough measure of everything dissolved in the water. RO water reads near 0, so TDS is a quick way to compare waters.
Area estimate from nearby wells: USGS well samples in your county (2000–2015).
- Baton Rouge Water Company and City of Denham Springs Water System add phosphate to protect pipes. It can feed algae in tanks without much plant growth.
Who supplies Central, LA
- 2025 water quality report
Baton Rouge Water Company
Serves 87% of residents · Groundwater (wells) · Chloramine
City of Denham Springs Water System
Serves 5% of residents · Groundwater (wells) · Chlorine
Our data comes from public records and is still incomplete. Many utilities don't publish every number, so we're adding more all the time. Your city's range is a starting point: testing your own tap is the only way to know exactly what's in it.
Tap water lookup covers US cities only for now. Want to know why it matters? Read our story on tap water.
Compiled by Shoal & Stem from public records. Free to cite with a link.