Orange, CA tap water
Supplied by City of Orange. Here's what its water means for your fish.
Disinfectant
Chloramine
Your water is treated with chloramine. Unlike chlorine, it doesn't gas off when water sits out, and many pitcher and fridge filters aren't rated to remove it. Conditioners that list chloramine on the label break it apart, which frees about 0.27 ppm of ammonia here. Some utilities switch to plain chlorine for a few weeks a year.
Safety for fish and shrimp
Ammonia (with conditioner)
Estimate0.27 ppm (Low)
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 City of Orange reports (2025).
Nitrite (NO₂)
Not detected (Low)
Not detected in testing, so any nitrite in your tank comes from the tank itself.
From California Water Board lab results (2024–2025).
Nitrate (NO₃)
3.3 ppm (Low)
Low, so water changes lower your tank's nitrate well.
Published by your utility: City of Orange's 2025 water quality report.
Copper at home taps (first draw)
0.2–0.32 ppm (Worth knowing)
The 90th percentile of first-draw samples from homes: water that sat in household pipes for at least six hours.
Shrimp and snails are sensitive to copper. Water that sits in household pipes picks up the most; it drops once the tap has run for a minute.
Published by your utility: City of Orange's 2025 water quality report.
Chlorine or chloramine at the tap
1.1 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: City of Orange's 2025 water quality report.
Water chemistry
General hardness
130–380 ppm
Typical 300 ppm
Hard. Ideal for livebearers and African cichlids. Soft-water species may struggle to breed.
Published by your utility: City of Orange's 2025 water quality report.
Carbonate hardness (alkalinity)
151–195 ppm
Typical 178 ppm
Strong buffering. pH stays steady and hard to lower without RO water.
From California Water Board lab results (2023–2026).
pH
7.9
Most community fish do well here. Stable water matters more than the exact number.
From EPA monitoring data (2016–2019).
Total dissolved solids
280–710 ppm
Typical 564 ppm
A rough measure of everything dissolved in the water. RO water reads near 0, so TDS is a quick way to compare waters.
Published by your utility: City of Orange's 2025 water quality report.
Who supplies Orange, CA
- 2025 water quality report
City of Orange
Serves 97% of residents · Buys water from East Orange County WD - Wz · Chloramine
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.