by Matthew Olsen

Created on: November 08, 2008

Water chemistry is a fancy word that aquarium owners like to use to describe what the water that they use contains. It just sounds better than walking up to someone and saying, "whats up with your water?" Among many chemical properties that regular water contains there is more than just chemical compounds floating around in there. Bacteria and other small life forms are also apart of water chemistry and when mixed right with the chemical components it creates a working ecosystem in your tank. The chemical aspects of water come down to three different categories. Water hardness, pH, and environmental contaminants are the three categories that define water chemistry. This article will explain why there are only these three and why they are important.

Water hardness is the concentration of metals in the water. The majority of metals in hard water are calcium and magnesium. Water hardness is a very dangerous situation because it effects the fishes ability to maintain stable water content in their bodies. Fish are very susceptible to osmosis, or the movement of water from a low concentration to a high concentration solution. Fish are susceptible to osmosis through their gills and have no way to stop this movement of water because if they do then they suffocate. Hard water makes the surrounding solution more concentrated than inside the fish. Water will move from inside the fish to the area of concentrated metals to even out the imbalance between the fish's insides and the water. This is always apparent with salt water fish because they live in such an environment (high salt concentration however and not metals are the reason) but fresh water fish are not. Fresh water fish have systems that remove water as it comes in because the fish is more concentrated than the water it lives in. If there is hard water however the fish's body readily gives away the water and can not regain it. This is dangerous for a fish's health but an important note is that distilled water is just as dangerous. The inflow of water will be very high and though it may not kill the fish it will make life very stressful for the fish. This is the reason for aquarium salts for fresh water tanks. To slow the amount of inflow that the fish has to deal with.

pH is another chemistry term but is much easier to explain than water hardness. pH stands for "particles Hydrogen" and rightly so the tests that determine pH record hydrogen ion concentration. The pH scale determines whether or not a solution is acidic,

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