PH Buffer, Die Die must. Period. Options

[mountain]

splitted from thread here.
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I think for PH crash it might be misleading to have SODIUM BICARBONATE as 1st line of treatment .. SODIUM BICARBONATE is for buffering water, and not for treatment of fish's health plus if the PH crash, HB wouldn't advised you to dump 2 teaspoon of BS into the water immediately

[goldrush]

There seems to be a lot of confusion in the terms being used here esp with regards to water measurements and values.So let me try to evaluate each meaning of this term to ease the confusion esp newbies who may not be familiar with these jargon.
Don't confuse soft water with acidic water and hard water with alkaline water. Just know that soft water is water without anything much dissolved in it. It is low in cations and anions and almost anything else. You may think of it as purified water. A Reversed Osmosis (RO) unit produces soft water by filtering away the dissolved solids. You can't get soft water by adding something to make the water acidic.

Hard water is rich in cations, mainly calcium and magnesium ions. Most natural water sources and even some municipal water have a rich mineral content. This makes the water hard. To make hard water soft, use a RO unit.

kH or carbonate hardness. It is a measure of the amount of carbonates and bicarbonates in water. The higher the kH, the higher the pH or alkalinity. kH has nothing to do with real hardness. So it is really a misnomer.

gH or general hardness. It is a measure of the amount of minerals like calcium and magnesium in water. This is real hardness. You can raise the hardness of water to dangerous levels by adding only calcium and magnesium ions but that does not mean that the pH or kH will rise along with it. This is because Ca and Mg does not affect pH or kH. It is the carbonates attached to the minerals that will increase pH and kH.

So hard water does not necessarily mean alkaline water and soft water does not necessarily mean acidic water.

To sum up, baking soda will not raise gH. It will raise Total Alkalinity (TA) or kH and pH. kH is not real hardness. It is a misnomer. gH is real hardness and is a measure of calcium and magnesium in water of which baking soda has none.


enough confusion

goldrush