Water Issues - Help and Advice Needed

[hjsvt]

I am currently trying to cycle a 29g with seed material from a failed 10g goldfish tank. All of my liquid test kits are finally here and I've been able to accurately test everything. We have softened well water and the test strips were telling me GH was 0 and KH was off the charts. Well they were accurate. With the liquid test my aquarium water right now is GH 2 drops or 35.8 ppm and KH is 20 drops and off the chart but appears to be 20dhK. The ph in my aquarium is holding steady at 8.2 but after a 50% water change (my nitrates and nitrites were getting so high I was having trouble reading the test) it was 7.8 but jumped the next morning to 8.2 again. I know that changes in ph like that aren't good and my GH and KH are way off for the average hardy tropical fish. So do I need deionized water? Because based on the paperwork with the GH and KH test the only way to reduce KH is deionized water. The paperwork also suggests API electro-right to raise the GH to acceptable levels. So given the level of KH in my tap water I'm assuming I need at least 2:1 or 3:1 deionized to tap. So about 11 gallons a week of deionized water to mix with tap to do a 50% water change. I'm assuming cost wise it makes sense then to purchase a water deionizer. I was looking at the AquaX Dolphin 50 gpd. So what do you recommend? What do I need to make this work? Also my tank is low tech planted and I just planted all new plants yesterday. I really really want to keep them alive and not kill them. Thankfully I don't have any fish yet! I would really appreciate any and all help you can offer. I don't know what to do and the lfs is an hour away. Maybe it's worth a trip up there anyway. Thanks!