# Water hardness/quality help



## aliclarke86 (22 Aug 2013)

I am moving house shortly and trying to figure out the water hardness/quality as much as I can before moving. 

Taken from water company website:






And the quality report





Thanks for any help.

Hope the pics come out readable 

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## Andy Thurston (22 Aug 2013)

Hi ali your hardness figure is very similar to mine and is soft/medium
Mine are 8 dgh and 6dkh and ceg said there ok but i might want to add magnesium which will add tds so i might not want to add if i intend breeding soft water fish it was in a pm so i cant show you until i work out how to invite others to conversation.


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## aliclarke86 (22 Aug 2013)

Thanks for your advice Andy and also Clive. As always his advice seems to be invaluable (as is yours, you have become quite the contributer on here since i joined in march) I am going to be testing the water as soon as I have a chance just didn't want to get in and find the water to be horrid for fish keeping/aquatic plants

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## Andy Thurston (22 Aug 2013)

Its great water compared to some places round the uk especially places like london with liquid calcium. I like helping people and as im not working at the moment i have plenty time to read and am constantly gaining knollege and as our lass says i have a good ability to remember and recall things i have read.I wont generally answer questions unless i can reference it. 
I've only been a member for as long as you and have only been keeping planted tanks for about a year. Thanks for the feed back its good to know my advice helps. Did you get the invite to my conversation with clive, i think i've worked that out now?
Cheers
Andy


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## aliclarke86 (22 Aug 2013)

Yes I did mate thanks a bunch

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## aliclarke86 (22 Aug 2013)

Sucks your not working at the mo I know when I was off work for 6 months it drove me crazy luckily this is such a nice and active community! 

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## Ravenswing (23 Aug 2013)

KH or GH does not correlate directly with water hardness. Electrical conductivity (EC) and/or totally dissolved salts (TDS) do. We here, for example,  have pretty low GH and KH but EC is over 400mS (sometimes over 600uS) from the tap wich means our  water is hard. There are other salts than magnesium, calsium or karbonates that makes our water hard. GH and KH are just parts of the whole puzzle called water hardness. Anyway, most soft water fish species, do well in a harder water too, but breeding, especially hatching, is sometimes another story.


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## dw1305 (23 Aug 2013)

Hi all,


Ravenswing said:


> KH or GH does not correlate directly with water hardness. Electrical conductivity (EC) and/or totally dissolved salts (TDS) do. We here, for example, have pretty low GH and KH but EC is over 400mS (sometimes over 600uS) from the tap wich means our water is hard. There are other salts than magnesium, calsium or karbonates that makes our water hard.


 I know what you mean, but dGH and dKH are the measures of water hardness, whilst conductivity is a measure of all the dissolved salts. Your water may have some dissolved NaCl (Na+ Cl- ions), these would raise conductivity, but they don't add any hardness, or effect the pH. 





> Anyway, most soft water fish species, do well in a harder water too, but breeding, especially hatching, is sometimes another story.


 This is what I've always believed, but there was a very interesting thread on Apistogramma forums which looked at this: <ok | Apistogramma.com>.

These are definitions of hardness (from Wikipedia)
*(dKH)Carbonate Hardness*​_One German degree of carbonate hardness is equivalent to about 17.848 milligrams of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) per litre of water (17.848 ppm). Both measurements (mg/L or KH) are usually expressed "as CaCO3" – meaning the concentration of carbonate expressed as if calcium carbonate were the sole source of carbonate ions. Bicarbonate ions only contribute half as much carbonate hardness as carbonate ions, so bicarbonates that are present in the water are converted to an equivalent concentration of carbonates when determining KH. _​_Example:_​_An aqueous solution containing 120 mg NaHCO3 (baking soda) per litre of water will contain 1.4285 mmol/L of bicarbonate, since the molar mass of baking soda is 84.007 g/mol. This is equivalent in carbonate hardness to a solution containing 0.71423 mmol/L of carbonate, or 71.485 mg/L of calcium carbonate (molar mass 100.09 g/mol). Since one degree KH = 17.848 mg/L CaCO3, this solution has a KH of 4.0052 degrees._​​_*(dGH)General Hardness*_​_General hardness is a measure of the concentration of metal divalent ions such as calcium and magnesium (Ca2+, Mg2+) per volume of water. Specifically, 1 dGH is defined as 10 milligrams (mg) of calcium oxide (CaO) per litre of water, which is equivalent to 0.17832 mmol per litre of elemental calcium and/or magnesium ions._​ 
cheers Darrel


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## roadmaster (23 Aug 2013)

My own expieriences suggest that most soft water species will do better in soft water than hard water and vice versa.
You and I can wear shoes that are too small for our feet, but we will be much more comfortable with shoes that fit properly.


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## ceg4048 (23 Aug 2013)

On the other hand, endlessly preparing and managing the logistics of RO water can make the hobbyist much less comfortable, and that leads to sloppiness, mishaps and disillusionment.

Fish do not have to wear the perfect shoes. They can live a longer and more comfortable life in a hard water tank than many of their brethren in their home town which are mere snacks for bigger cousins. If the hobbyist is willing to commit to the extra work required to use RO then there is no reason not to use it, but if it becomes tedious then one need not be concerned with the less than optimal comfort zone of a hard water tank. Both fish and plants are capable of wearing many different shoes.

Cheers,


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## sciencefiction (23 Aug 2013)

Yes, as Ceg says, the harder it is to keep up with the tank, the less chance you'll keep doing it.


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## roadmaster (26 Aug 2013)

ceg4048 said:


> On the other hand, endlessly preparing and managing the logistics of RO water can make the hobbyist much less comfortable, and that leads to sloppiness, mishaps and disillusionment.
> 
> Fish do not have to wear the perfect shoes. They can live a longer and more comfortable life in an hard water tank than many of their brethren in their home town which are mere snacks for bigger cousins. If the hobbyist is willing to commit to the extra work required to use RO then there is no reason not to use it, but if it becomes tedious then one need not be concerned with the less than optimal comfort zone of a hard water tank. Both fish and plants are capable of wearing many different shoes.
> 
> Cheers,


 
Yes,, some fishes wear their shoes more comfortably than other's may.
Kinda like some larger women,Smaller ones too!!, who cram their feet into ridiculously uncomfortable looking shoes.


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## dw1305 (28 Aug 2013)

Hi all,


roadmaster said:


> My own expieriences suggest that most soft water species will do better in soft water than hard water and vice versa.


I agree with this, particularly with regard to successful spawning, but the linked thread really deals with raising conductivity, rather than hardness. I'm pretty sure that if you want to spawn _Apistogramma elizabethae _or similar, you need to get everything just right.


ceg4048 said:


> On the other hand, endlessly preparing and managing the logistics of RO water can make the hobbyist much less comfortable, and that leads to sloppiness, mishaps and disillusionment.


I also agree with this, I like "KISS" solutions that are robust if unexpected events occur.  

cheers Darrel


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## aliclarke86 (7 Sep 2013)

OK so I'm in the new house and I am new to testing hardness so imbgetting KH reading at 2° DKH and GH at 8° DKH. What I don't understand is how these correlate. Can anyone point me to an article that can explain this a bit better? I'm using an API kit btw

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## terry82517 (7 Sep 2013)

One of the many things iv learnt recently on ukaps is to never ever trust test kits! I cant tell you but Im sure Clive will tell you why the reading are wrong!


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## ceg4048 (8 Sep 2013)

There is no direct correlation between KH and GH.

The measurement called KH is supposed to refer to the concentration level of Carbonate ions (CO3--) and the level of Bicarbonate ions (HCO3-) in the water. These ions are simply charged particles that have an imbalance of electric charge due to the migration and distribution of electrons (which are negatively charged) which are orbiting the positively charged nucleus.

Here is a schematic of the Carbonate ion. In this image the darker pink area of the structure indicates a strong negative charge due to 2 electrons that spend most of their time on the left side. The ion is said to be "polar" because the distribution of charge is not equal across the structure. Positive charges are therefore more likely to be attracted to that side of the structure. If the positive charge of a nearby particle is strong enough it will rip that Oxygen atom away from the CO3 structure and that original structure will become CO2.




What can also happen is that a less strong positively charged nearby particle can attach itself to CO3. This changes the structure and the distribution of electrical charge as the electrons redistribute themselves. A single Hydrogen ion (H+) can attach itself to CO3 so that it becomes HCO3-. This new structure is called Bicarbonate, but it's new charge is -1 (as opposed to a -2 charge for CO3) because of the addition of the +1 charged Hydrogen. The new structure is drawn schematically as:

Still, both the -2 charged carbonate as well as the -1 charge Bicarbonate both strongly attract positively (+1) charged Hydrogen ions (H+).

Anytime there is an acid added to the water the acid structure disassembles to dump negatively charged particles in addition to  H+ ions. The relative concentration of H+ determines the pH. A high positive charge in the water (due to high population of H+) will register a low pH. If there is an abundance of Carbonate or Bicarbonate in the water however, these negatively charged ions will tend to attract and sequester the H+ ions, thereby neutralizing the positive charge. This ability to sequester the H+, to reduce the impact of the positively charged ions from the acid is known as Alkalinity. Alkalinity in water suppresses the impact of H+ by capturing the H+ ions and attaching them to the two structures shown above.

This is why you take Bicarbonates such as Alka-Seltzer when you have an upset stomach due to high stomach acid content (when you eat a lot the stomach produces high levels of strong acids to break down the food). The "Alka" in the product name refers to Alkalinity.

So, water with high alkalinity means that there may be an abundance of CO3 and/or HCO3. I say "may be" because there are other positively charged particles that can sequester H+ in a similar manner to CO3 and HCO3. Your KH test kit has no idea which particles are actually performing this acid  "buffering". The KH test kit therefore can only measure alkalinity NOT the Carbonate/Bicarbonate concentration because it cannot distinguish between the identity of the charged particles. It can only register their ability to neutralize an acid. Bicarbonate is a very important ion because the same thing it does for your stomach, it accomplishes in your blood (and in fishes blood) Because there is an interaction between bicarbonate, H+ and CO2, the circulatory system produces bicarbonate to neutralize acid in the bloodstream and to help move toxic CO2 away from the tissues to the lungs or gills where it can be ejected.

When you measure GH, what you are looking for is the waters content of the ions Magnesium (Mg+) and Calcium (Ca++). Again, the GH test kit cannot distinguish between these two, only their net effect in the water. Because these ions are positively charged, they can have some indirect effect on alkalinity, but these two parameters should not be linked. In some cases Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3) is added to the water, either intentionally or unintentionally. Because this compound disassociates to dump both Ca++ and CO3-- into the water, it will have an effect on GH as well as KH, but really there is no point in attempting to link the two, because these kits do not give you enough information to construct any link.

Cheers,


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