Please start by finding and reading the Water Quality Report for your tap water source supplier. That will let you know what the water is like when it leaves the plant. NY seems to monitor these reports well and there is a standard form for the state. Pay special attention to the min/max pH, GH and KH.* Then, with your handy, dandy test kits—which I’m sure you have because a TDS does tell you any specifics. Then check the water from your tap daily for about ten days for the following: pH, GH, KH. This is important because things can swing wildly from day to day in some areas based on what type of pH correction they do and on what schedule. If they do their pH correction twice a week for example, you may see a swing in your parameters twice a week.
Also, if you live in an area where the pipes are old or very old, or if you live in an old apartment building, beware of the possibility of lead and copper in your water. From 2012-2019, we lived in an old (1947) apartment complex. It was fun to walk through the basement and see all of the different water pipes cobbled together to fix whenever they had a pinhole leak, which was about once a month just for our twelve units in our section. We did have lead and copper and a pH quite different than the pH in the WQR. Since we moved to a single home residence in ‘19, we have to deal with the wide swings in pH based on when they add lime to raise the pH. Parts of the area served have very old pipes under the streets and they don’t want go be like Flint, MI. Our pH swing is from 7.4-8.2, so RO/DI and a few additives is far easier than buffering.
STILL, it sounds like you may be one of the lucky ones.
*Read the whole report. It’s got great info about contaminants and heavy metals. And if you don’t see any chloramines in the report, they could be using chlorine dioxide as the do in my area for pre-treatment sanitization. Nice thing about chlorine dioxide is that it’s safe for all your aquaculture needs. But they’ll still add chlorine before it leaves the plant.
