Hi all,
The terms all relate to one another, but are expressed in different terms.
pH
Is a bit of a funny measurement. Because acidity/alkalinity is difficult to calculate, or compare (without using titremetric methods) the pH scale was developed which acts as a proxy, by expressing acidity/alkalinity in terms of the equivalent activity of H+ ions (also called "protons", and actually in the form of hydronium ions H3O+)
I'll use Wikipedia for this as it covers the important bit fairly succinctly.
"
In a solution pH approximates ... to p[H], the negative logarithm (base 10) of the molar concentration of dissolved hydronium ions (H3O+); a low pH indicates a high concentration of hydronium ions, while a high pH indicates a low concentration. Crudely, this negative of the logarithm matches the number of places behind the decimal point, so for example 0.1 molar hydrochloric acid should be near pH 1 and 0.0001 molar HCl should be near pH 4 (the base 10 logarithms of 0.1 and 0.0001 being -1, and -4, respectively). Pure (de-ionised) water is neutral, and can be considered either a very weak acid or a very weak base (centre of the 0 to 14 pH scale), giving it a pH of 7 (at 25 °C (77 °F)), or 0.0000001 M H+.[1] For an aqueous solution to have a higher pH, a base must be dissolved in it, which binds away many of these rare hydrogen ions. Hydrogen ions in water can be written simply as H+ or as hydronium (H3O+) ions."
Acidity
"
An acid is a substance which can act as a proton (H+) donor. Most acids encountered in everyday life are aqueous solutions, or can be dissolved in water, and these two definitions are most relevant. The reason why pH of acids are less than 7 is that the concentration of hydronium ions is greater than 10-7 moles per litre. Since pH is defined as the negative logarithm of the concentration of hydronium ions, acids have pH of less than 7.
Alkalinity or basicity
"
A base in chemistry is a substance that can accept hydrogen ions or more generally, donate electron pairs. A soluble base is referred to as an alkali if it contains and releases hydroxide ions (OH-) quantitatively. The Brønsted-Lowry theory defines bases as proton (hydrogen ion H+) acceptors".
So out of all that the important bit is
acids are H+ donors and alkalis are H+ acceptors.
This is why "wearsbunnyslippers" is 100% correct when he says "
the humic acid (from the peat) binds the positively charged calcium and magnesium ions, and exchanges them for positively charged hydrogen ions ......decreasing the pH. " So this is an acid base reaction. dGH is the measure of the divalent cations (Ca2+ and Mg2+), from the peat reaction you can see that if you have water with a high dGH (conc. of Ca and Mg ions), you need a lot of peat to donate enough H+ ions to accept all the Ca/Mg 2+ ions. This process doesn't greatly effect the TDS, all you have done is replaced one sort of compound with another. Probably this is best shown by an image (NaCl/H2SO4 can be any salt/acid):
These are general acid base interactions, but we can then look at a specific acid / base pair, the pairing that is probably most relevant to us is the reaction between CO2 and carbonates, this is slightly complicated by the disassociation into bicarbonate and carbonate, but starts with
CO2 dissolving to form carbonic acid (H2CO3):
CO2 + H2O is in equilibrium with H2CO3.
You can drive the equation in either direction by adding either CO2 or a source of carbonates:
CO32- +2 H2O ? HCO3- + H2O + OH- ? H2CO3 +2 OH-
&
H2CO3 +2 H2O ? HCO3- + H3O+ + H2O ? CO32- +2 H3O+
In your very hard carbonate rich water (water with a high dKH "K(c)arbonate Hardness") you have a large supply of carbonate, this is "buffering", the potential to neutralise acids (or technically to accept H+ ions). The dKH is from the carbon dioxide (CO2, but dissolved as H2CO3 in rainwater) reacting with limestone (calcium carbonate (CaCO3)) to form soluble calcium bicarbonate (Ca(HCO3)2) and giving you a large reserve of carbonate buffering in the water.
Neither fish or plants are entirely problematic in very hard water, if you think of the English Chalk Streams they are species rich in both plants and animals. Other than fish from the Rift Valley Lakes, there are plenty of live bearers, CA cichlids, Rainbow fish etc that thrive in hard water. I'm not an expert in these at all, but this looks a reasonable list:
<
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/fwsubwebindex/fwhardness.htm>.
cheers Darrel