acidic vs alkline

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candidpets

candidpets

Candiru
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I always thought acidic refers to soft water super soft while alkline is super hard

Am i wrong in this? can soft alkline and hard acidic exist or mutually exclusive?

sorry english is not my first language i dont make sense sometimes lol
 
Think of it this way...hardness is the waters ability to change pH. Soft water is easy to change, a little acid can change it a lot. Hard water is hard to change the pH. A lot of acid will not change it. You are right, soft water tends to be more acidic. Hard water is always alkaline.
 
Well, the lower pH tends to be more acidic. It doesn't really make it acidic. It's just that hard water is much more difficult to make acidic because of the buffering nature of hard water. It can be a bit confusing! Hard/soft water and high or low pH are two different measurements, but they tend to go hand in hand due to the chemistry of they effect each other. It is possible to create hard acidic water, or soft alkaline water...it just doesn't normally occur in nature.
 
Alkalinity is the waters capacity to neutralize acids with minerals like calcium.
Water can be hard, with other minerals such as iron, etc, that don't neutralize calcium, so hard doesn't necessarily mean alkaline.
You can have above neutral pH, but still "not" have much buffering capacity.
This is why water changes are needed (especially in low alkaline waters), to dilute the acids produced by fish urine, and metabolism by-products.
In a high alkalinity environment, the calcium will neutralize fish urine, so you may not need a water change for a week in a lightly stocked tank.
If your tap water is low in alkalinity, in less than a week your fish could be swimming in urine soup because there is nothing to buffer it.
 
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ok no matter what i do use peat, use drift wood, use ro water (put a bucket in) use plants, use water softener. I cannot make my gulper tank acidic!! AFTER USING ALL THIS the ph is 7.5 the gh is extreme as high as it can get. Kh is the only thing that i have seen drop a little. MAKES NO SENSE> should i be using outdoor pond water maybe?
 
The tannins given off by the peat, and the wood may slightly lower pH, but the most important thing they do, is act as an antibacterial agent.
If your gulper is an Orinoco species these tannins may be more important than water softening.
There are gulpers that come from Central America and other parts of South America where the water is highly alkaline. Do you know which river yours comes from?
 
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