Re: [Killietalk] tap water buffers

[Scott Davis <unclescott at prodigy_net>]

Both the threads on RO water and Air exchangers vs. dehumidifiers have been very useful and offer considerable food for thought. It is sobering what some dehumidifiers, tap water and water softeners can leave in our aquariums? waters. Thank you for asking questions some of us don't even know to ask and thank you for the insights offered by the answers.

Brian raised the question was to what might have been added by the local municipal water department to buffer the water so that it was running at a pH of over 7. I think Wright, probably 1,000s of posts ago, first brought this concern to our attention.

As a decidedly non-chemistry oriented person, there are times when I hear things and do wonder if I'm just getting ushered down the garden path. It seems that one discussion on-line (which naturally I can't find) indicated that some sort of aluminum (alum?) was sometimes used to buffer the water. In this age where people are wondering about a connection (in the popular mind anyway) between Alzheimer's disease and aluminum, I wonder at that.

Another conversation with a gentleman at a fish shop in New Baltimore, MI again ambled into the topic of water chemistry and municipal water. He contended that his community, ?as odd as it sounds? according to him, added phosphoric acid, to the water. He suggested that "they" added that acid so that it would combine with minerals in the water and the resulting scale would coat old lead pipes, protecting them from dissolving in the tap water. He then fretted about the declining diameter of everyone's pipes.

Are the natural buffers in water usually some sort of carbonate? Is there a reluctance among municipal water people to add more of those compounds because of the additional calcium and magnesium which would be introduced to the system?

Are buffers using aluminum being used to buffer tap water or is that miss-information? Are there cases of phosphoric acid being used to coat municipal pipes?

What else is being used to buffer tap water? What impact may these things have on our killies ? or us?

Thanks and all the best!
Scott
Join the AKA at http://www.aka.org/aka/modules/content/index.php?id=9.
Archives are at http://fins.actwin.com/killietalk/
Modify your subscription at http://www.actwin.com/mailman/listinfo.cgi/killietalk