Talk:Brackish water

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"that is more salty than fresh water, but not as much as salt water" - this is my change (from "that is less salty than fresh water") - I'm on expert but that sure didn't seem right. Hope I was right here... -- OlofE

Yeah, you're right -- it's in between fresh water and seawater; I don't know how I managed to write it backwards. Thanks! :-) -- Marj 23:39 Sep 20, 2002 (UTC)

I see a source of confusion: the list of brackish water lakes in this article includes and links to an article on Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana. The Pontchartrain article says it is a salt water lake but never uses the word brackish. LA RoeDoe 18:18, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I see the problem has been fixed very nicely -- nothing like becoming a current event to add interest to an article 69.231.81.93 04:07, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

can brackish water be drunk safely?

No. The traditional definition of brackish water is that it is water less salty than the sea, but still too salty to drink. I have no idea what this minimum value is in terms of human physiology, but freshwater fish and plants stop being common in water with about 1/5 the salinity of normal seawater, so I'd imagine that the baseline is somewhere close to that. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 19:38, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

The table states brackish water is defined as 0.5 to 30 per mil (that's 0.05 to 3.0 percent) salt. That's w/v, by the way. Gatorade is 127 mg/L K⁺ and 464 mg/L Na⁺ which adds up to .591% cations w/v. I'm too lazy to do the calc but the anions (Cl^-) would drive the total salt percentage even higher. So I think it's clear 0.05% salt water would be safe to drink. On the other extreme, we know 3.0% salt w/v is close to seawater and is definitely not safe to drink. So the answer is that it really depends; the cutoff from "safe to drink" to "not safe" takes place somewhere in the brackish water spectrum. --Ginkgo100 ^{talk · contribs · e@} 20:24, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

1 Annoying!
2 Brackish habitats and examples
3 Brackish or brack water?
4 Rewording Brackish water habits section
5 Percentage vs Parts Per Million
6 Total dissolved solids

[edit] Annoying!

What is so difficult to understand about the discussion?.. How come some are getting confused on what is written?... That is why I wonder if they really don't understand or they just want to say something in the discussion!.. thanks!

viper2000_77

It's amazing how easily things can become confused. WaterGuy

[edit] Brackish habitats and examples

I've added a substantial bit on brackish water habitats, giving examples of the different types and the way the faunas change as you go along them. More can/should be added. It seemed silly to me that the brackish water aquarium bit I added was the biggest part of the text after the intro. I've demoted it.

Also re-did the examples: they were a jumble. I've arranged them by type and then alphabetically, and then by the proper name (excluding "lake" or "river"). This makes it a bit easier to read the list, and more logical for people who want to add to it.

Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 19:19, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Brackish or brack water?

Is the "ish" suffix necessary? I thought it was more common to refer to "brack water" rather than "brackish water". "Brackish" makes it sound as if one is not sure whether it really is salty enough to be considered brack or not. Perhaps this is only a feature of South African English where the word is often spelt "brak" (the C is superfluous and alien in Afrikaans orthography). Booshank 13:43, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

In British English and American English, brackish water is the usual usage. Can't speak for other nations though! Perhaps worth putting a point about this somewhere in the introduction? Neale Monks 17:57, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

My Shorter Oxford English Dictionary lists brack as a synonym of brackish. I see someone has added it to the introduction. Booshank 16:31, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rewording Brackish water habits section

I don't know enough about brackish water to re-write the article myself, but some lines need to be re-written to reach that encyclopedia tone. Such as:

"The most important brackish water habitats are estuaries, where a river meets the sea. The River Thames flowing through London is one of the most familiar of all river estuaries."

Why is it the most important? Don't say it's important, write why it is important. Is it really important, or was that an easy way to introduce that section? And for the second line, how about: A familiar example of an estuary is the River Thames, which flows through London. It sounds less personal. 16:49, 12 February 2007 (UTC)16:49, 12 February 2007 (UTC)~~ryanpm

[edit] Percentage vs Parts Per Million

I don't get this. The brackish water article is different from the other related articles (freshwater, saline, etc). They have parts per million and apparently this article uses percentage. Either way it makes it confusing because it almost reads like brackish water is 5% or something like that and the other articles say 50%. I am a bit confused on this and am voting for use of standardization. Sorry if I am not fully clear. Just look yourself and see what I mean. --Marsbound2024 05:31, 22 June 2007 UTC

It is parts per million (milligrams in 1000000 mg water) = ppm . Example - 3.5 % salinity is 3.5 gram in 100 gram of water. It is 35 gram per 1000 g water = 35000 milligram in million mg water. Million milligram of water or 35000 parts per one million milligram water = ppm. 1 mg per million mg is 1 ppm

That makes 35000 parts per million or 35000 ppm

Have a look on salinity. jmak (talk)