"Douglas Barber" wrote in message
...
I read somewhere that you can soften water by boiling it, and decided to
do this as an experiment with my well water here in Crisfield, MD (about
1/2 mile from the Chesapeake Bay).

Before boiling, my water was 10 degrees (not ppm) general hardness, with
a pH of 7.8. After boiling for about 2 hours and cooling, it was 4.5
degrees general hardness and (this is the part that mystifies me) over
8.8 pH.

Boiling will not decrease the mineral content in the water it will increase
it if anything. When the water boils the only thing that leaves is water (as
steam) leaving slightly less water to the same amount of minerals so the
concentration increases.

You may find that some of the minerals will deposit in the container you
used to boil the water in the first place, but that won't change much.

The pH increases because by boiling the water you will drive some of the
dissolved CO2 out of the water which will cause the pH to go down. It will
soon reabsorb the CO2 from the air and the pH will return to the values
before you boiled the water.


I don't have a test kit to measure carbonate hardness.

Any ideas what's going on here? If I add this water to my aquarium,
which is about 50/50 unboiled well water/distilled water with a net 5
degrees general hardness and pH pretty stable at about 7.8, is it going
to raise the pH of the aquarium by as much as I would intuitively think
it would?


Just put an airstone in the water for a wef ours and you will find that it
has returned to normal.


Boiling really doesn't do much (besides waste a lot of energy) to your water
unless you have a lot of baterual growth / contamination that will be killed
off in the process, oh, and chlorine will go to (but there are better ways
of getting rid of that)


Does your water come from a contaminated well, that will require the water
to be boiled to be healthy to use in a fish tank.


Regards

Morten




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