Despite my lack of posts recently I haven't given up on the tests to
see if FloraPride really is softening my water. I could use some help
though. So if you have a bottle of FloraPride and would like to
contribute to my impromptu study then do some tests and post your
results here. Here's what I've done so far:

First I need to know whether or not my GH test kit is pH sensitive,
Elaine suggested this possibility when I first mentioned FloraPride
softening the water and it seemed like a likely one. In order to test
this I took two samples of tap water:

350mL tap water: pH = 6.8 , GH = 4dGH
350mL tap water + 1/4 tsp. sodium bicarb: pH = 7.6++ , GH = 2

Here the pH is far behond the limits of my test kit (as expected) and
the GH has indeed been effected. I was suprised that it lowered, I
would have expected the opposite so I decided to use a much smaller
amount of sodium bicarb and try again. Here the measurements of sodium
bicarb are approximate, the smallest dry measure I had was a 1/4 tsp so
I took that and divided it in half with a knife repeatedly to get
smaller measures.

350mL tap water: pH = 6.8 , GH = 4dGH
350mL tap + 1/512 tsp sodium bicarb: pH = 7.2 , GH = 4dGH

So here a 0.4 change in pH has not affected GH by a measureable amount.
I decided to double the amount of sodium bicarb and try again. From
here on I'll leave out the tap water parameters since they remain the
same throughout.

350mL tap + 1/256 tsp sodium bicarb: pH = 7.6 , GH = 3dGH

Here i have reached the limit of my test kit for pH but the color has
not darkened past the limit as it did in the initial test so I feel
that the pH is probably accurate despite being at the limit of the
test. The GH has begun to lower so I think this certainly shows that my
GH test kit is in fact pH sensitive. To further test this I tried to
make a lower pH solution - however I don't usually try to lower the pH
of my water so I didn't have anything on hand to do so. I improvised
and used lemon juice - I'm not sure if this is a useful measurement or
not - for all I know there could be something in lemon juice that
contributes to GH significantly but here are the results anyway:

300mL tap + 50mL lemon juice: pH = 6.0-- , GH = 6++

Here we have passed the lower limit of my pH test kit by far and the GH
has obviously gone up. I didn't bother going beyond 6dGH with the test
kit because I wasn't confident that this was even a valid measurement
and if it is then 6dGH is enough to show that yes, GH does go up with
this test kit as pH goes down (the expected result in light of the
sodium bicarb tests).

So I have shown that my GH test kit is pH sensitive. **However** what I
have shown is that increasing pH causes decreasing GH and vice versa.
Now let's test the FloraPride.

350mL tap + 10mL FloraPride: pH = 6.0-- , GH = 2dGH

So here the FloraPride is pushing the pH down and the GH down at the
same time. Something is going on. I would like to test weaker
concentrations of FloraPride to see what happens to the GH for pH
values in the range of my test kit but haven't done so yet.

I would appreciate some independant measurements. If you have time and
FloraPride available to you do some of these test (or design your own)
and report the results. I'd really like to know if this stuff softens
the water or not.

Comments? Additional data? Any input is welcome!

-Daniel