GH and KH - Should I care?

Do I understand correctly that gh and kh are only important if you have plants or want to breed fish? I have all plastic plants and don't plan to have little fish babies. When I did the 5-in-1 test strip, I saw that the KH is 180 and hardness is 300. In case it matters, pH is about 7.8. Nitrite and ammonina are 0; nitrate is < 20. Should I be concerned about gh and kh?
 
GH and KH and always important. They are the the "hardness" and "alkalinity" of the water. They can each build up in the tank water depending on substrate and rockwork used, or alternately may be depleted in a tank. You always need to have some idea of what your water parameters are, and whether or not they are stable. If they are not stable, you need to figure out why they are not and take corrective action.

But most hobby fish in community tanks on most public water supplies in the USA will be fine without modifications. Unfortunately "most" never means all, so if you don't know what the parameters of your water are, you could be at risk.
 
RTR - I just checked out your tank specs. WOW!!! How big is your tank room? How long have you been doing this?
 
The tank room is small, 8x14', but the long wall between it and the pool room is fake, so all the tanks on that wall are visible from the adjacent room and serve as display, such as it is (these are hardy "show" tanks).

I've been playing these games since teen-age/pre-teen, so over 50 years. There were times in college and grad school that tanks were semi-temporary. And there have been periods with >40 tanks.
 
RTR said:
These materials are fully ionized. If you dry the water out, as the concentration of the minerals in the water get higher from loss of water volume, they will fall out as carbonates and bicarbonates, among other salts.

RTR,
Were you answering my question that I posted a while ago with this post? If you were, I still don't understand how this would answer my question, so could you explain it more thoroughly for me please?
 
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