Water basics

Water basics. Living in air as we do, protected from its deadly drying by our skin and our mucus and tears, we don't intuitively realize how intimately a fish is connected with its supportive watery medium. Mike Edwardes, whose webpage was a favorite of mine, said, "We are not keeping fish, we are keeping water."
 
If there was a single moment that started turning me from a beginner hobbyist into an aquarist, maybe it was the shock of discovering that my crystal-clear "polished" aquarium water was invisibly fouled with wastes! That's when I began to see how essential it is to understand something of how water reacts chemically and the role it plays in the web of "cycles" in which the aquarium necessarily takes part.
 
The basic things you should know about the water in your aquarium are very clearly explained, first of all as "Beginner FAQ: practical water chemistry" at FAQ The Krib, and then in the discussions of practical freshwater chemistry at The Krib and discussions of pH and "hardness" there as well.  These documents cover pH, including raising and lowering it, the water's alkalinity or buffering capacity (KH) and its general hardness (GH). The Krib also includes some techniques of water softening. Add the material on the carbon dioxide/bicarbonate/carbonate buffering at  The Krib, and it could be all that you need to know right now.
 
An article at Fishdoc.uk explores aspects of "water hardness and fish health"  linked to related topics: hardness and osmoregulation, hardness and pH, hardness and nitrification.
 
Basic physics, chemistry, biology and ecology of freshwater. Norm Meck's document "Pond Water Chemistry" prepared for the Koi Club of San Diego and posted at their website, is a complete introductory briefing on water parameters, as relevant to the water conditions of your aquarium as it is to a koi pond. Look at its table of contents now, because you may want to come back and refer to it.
 
Ranging farther than a strictly aquaristic viewpoint, many college courses in Aquatic Biology are now represented on the Web in some kind of synopsis that you can retrieve through www.google.com, but none beat the carefully laid out sections of Assoc. Prof Dave McShaffrey's "Sextant Guide to Aquatic Biology" at Marietta College: There each new term is pretty well explained as it first comes up, so if you follow carefully, you'll never be at sea. Click on the link now to get the drift. Sooner or later you'll want to sit down with that site and fully absorb it.