Everything about Well Water

[bettebulldog]

Will be moving to a house with a private well. I currently am on city tap water. I guess i know nothing about the water at the moment. How to adjust fish to the water? Do i have any benefits from a well? Do I need to have RO? Just aged? Any info would be much appreciated as I have no experience on a well system.

[ref0716]

It all depends completely on the characteristics of the water in the well. The one thing for sure is that it will not be chlorinated.
My well water comes out at a pH of 7.0, very soft, and very cold. All of my fish have adapted very well to "tap water". I simply temper the cold with some hot using a python and go at it with water changes: no need for dechlor or aging. That's been my experience, at least. Hope your's is a positive one as well.
Richard

[Jhhnn]

You need to run an entire test series on the new water from the well- KH, GH, ammonia, nitrites, nitrates and TDS (if you have a TDS meter). Age and aerate a fairly large sample for 24 hrs to see if the pH changes, as some well water is high in dissolved CO2 which lowers pH.

Sometimes help is available form the county agricultural agent or similar agency. They may run a really complete analysis for free or nominal charge. They may also be able to tell you a lot about your water without that- neighbors undoubtedly draw their water from the same aquifer, so it's likely subject to occasional testing, at least...

[David Rose]

Will be moving to a house with a private well. I currently am on city tap water. I guess i know nothing about the water at the moment. How to adjust fish to the water? Do i have any benefits from a well? Do I need to have RO? Just aged? Any info would be much appreciated as I have no experience on a well system.

I'm on a private well, but no two wells are the same necessarily:

Pluses:
-no municipal costs for consumption, so unlimited water changes a plus
-no costs needed for dechlor products; unless, you want the benefits of treating metals and such like Prime, Safe et al.

As for the rest, you will need to get a sample ahead of time to test and prepare or once you get into your new home.

If your water is high in CO2, you will need to age your water to stabilize it to know your true pH. RO is usually only needed if you want to breed or just want great tasting drinking water. :)

PS: low water pressure could impact your siphoning and clean up of tank.

[Eddie]

I ended up using one of these to get a better idea of my water source. May have been a waste but it gave me some good info.

http://www.filtersfast.com/Complete-Water-Test-Kit-filters.asp


Eddie

[bettebulldog]

I will be having the well tested prior to moving in. After I figure out the water should i set a tank up for a day or two then slow drip the fish with the new water? That would be great not to need chemicals for water changes. I am probably going to get a whole house filter system so would i need to remineralize tank water ?

[David Rose]

I installed a whole house Culligan water softening system given my well water is high 16gph and 12 gkh and their RO unit as well, but it services my drinking water from the fridge/ice cubes, added kitchen faucet, and water storage tank in the basement laundry room below the kitchen. Note the RO unit is after the house water softening system, so it saves on the membrane. This was my preference. I think most folks with RO have it for their tank(s) only.

Remineralization depends on your end readings, but most likely yes, but you can use tap water/RO mix as the first option. Keep in mind that if your using a whole house water softening system, it will exchange salt for calcium/magnesium (GH), so I don't think you could do the tap water/RO mix. You may want to consider having outside faucets and one inside faucet that is not filtered. Or you would need to spend some of the savings on Kent's RO and Discus Essentials to remineralize.

This is at least my set up and things I considered given my normal well water tests.

[Jhhnn]

It all depends on how close the water is to your old water. Some people advocate drop and plop, I'm more along the lines of acclimation over an hour or so, others do a slow drip for a much longer time... I'd treat the moving and new tank water with prime, at least for the initial setup, and bring old established filters to the new tank. It'll take weeks to properly cycle, otherwise.

If you're just using whole house sediment and carbon filters, remineralization generally won't be needed.

If the new water is extremely soft, very low KH, you may want to add minerals anyway to stabilize it, have some buffering capacity so as to avoid pH crash...

If the new water is very, very hard, then you may want to blend it with R/O water to get a good balance. Dunno about water softeners...

[bettebulldog]

thnks for the info. Guess ill just have to wait for the results. I know im going with the whole house filter for sure. RO maybe for drinking? I hope to use just the filtered well water.

[David Rose]

Who knows you maybe lucky and not have to do a thing.

PS: I found out that when you have your well water tested as a part of a real-estate transaction, there is a lot that they don't have to test for. Mostly it's about bacterial levels, maybe iron. Be sure to ask questions of the company doing it for you before hand (you get to choose who it is), but they may want to charge extra for TDS or other specifics related to your discus keeping.;)

[Jason K.]

hey bettle, im in s.w. wisconsin, my well water is liqiud rock, so i have to use a r/o tap mix. oh and buy the way how's it going with the little fella's?

[Jhhnn]

One of our friends has R/O drinking water. I find it to be utterly tasteless and non-satisfying. Bleh. Denver tap water is a lot better, imho, although some suburban water is entirely too flavorful. I wouldn't do anything with well water until I'd seen the analysis and drank it myself for awhile...

Local water guys often know just how to deal with problem water in their area, using special filters tailored to specific problems, like high iron or whatever. If your well water turns out to be a little weird, talk to them, as they've probably seen it before...

[Joe]

I relocated about a year ago to a home with well water. In the beginning I had nothing but problems. Well water perameters change so much each time it rain's/snow's. Personally I hate well water. We now have a home water filter & I also use RO system. This has made a difference, but I'm still "adjusting" to well water with my fish. Please keep us posted with your experience!

Joe

[gwrace]

I guess I'm just the opposite. I love our well water here in south Texas. We pump into an above ground 2500 gallon tank. The tank has a submersible pump that boosts pressures to between 65-80 PSI via a cycle stop valve. We then run the water through a whole house filter and water softener. PH is steady around 7.6-7.8 and I don't mess with it. We do mix 50% of hard water with what comes from the tap for the minerals that benefit the fish. Out of the ground the water is pretty hard at 250-300 PPM. I also occasionally use Amquel +, Novaqua + or Prime as aquarium additives. I vacuum and change about 75% of the water once a week in all tanks.