Moving - changing to well water HELP!!

[rickten]

Hello all I will be moving in the next month or so to a house that has well water. House does have a softener.  My question- is there any thing i should do to the water during my water changes? have 4 tanks going and 2 tanks have Tropheus.

[Mastiffman/ Duramax7Man7]

I'm guessing you'll want to tap a line from your main water line Before the Softener to use for the Trophs! Maybe put a larger carbon filter on that...?

Anyone else?

[rickten]

I am so nervous but i fell in love with house. Thank you! Will text you tomorrow.

[GMtrophs]

My suggestion is get a water tester and test your water first...also the house could be hooked up to water softener but check around the house for water spigot and test it as well...that spigot might not be hooked up to the water softener...hope i make sense and good luck!

[...]

Hey Rick we too are moving to a well supply house. Is your water sulfurous or have high iron levels?
Our water test result met EPA standard for drinking water related to bacteria and nitrate. We don't have sulfur fortunately but we do have either ferrous (dissolved) or ferric (particulate) iron. Andrew informed me that for fish the iron needs to be <0.3ppm. I have yet to establish this level thru testing but there are numerous strip tests kits you can purchase to check out the spectrum of your waters elements. We have a guy from Culligan of NW Ohio coming Monday. I want the mineral water minus the iron if >0.3 otherwise we'll drink it straight out of the ground as our property has very sandy soil, a great natural filter for a deep well.
I have a 20 gallon compression tank connected to the deep well jet pump. I have a regular hose outlet plumbed inline already  to use to do re-fills if the iron levels check out to be fish friendly. If not, I hope to re-plumb the outlet in the water filtration system after iron removal but prior to ion exchange. I really wanna keep the natural hardness in my water for my beloved troph's etc.
If your softener eliminates the natural minerals in your water your aquarium systems your prozed African cichlids may suffer, also your tanks may be vulnerable to pH swings. If that is the case I would suggest using seachem cls to remineralize your water and perhaps even tang buffer (or a bit of sodium bicarb) to buffer your pH.
Will keep you posted mate!
Catch ya soon brutha!

[...]

My iron levels came back 0.5-1.0 mg/l (equiv. to ppm). The EPA recommends <0.5 for drinking so we have just hooked up a water softener & RO unit to our well supply. The RO unit is for drinking water only. The rest of the house is supplied straight after the softening process. I have a spigot available to take water directly from well, and 1 to take water after it is softened. I didn't realize that regular sodium is the type of salt used in the softening process. Lake Tanganyika has 57-64 mg/l of sodium. Next step for me is to check the salinity of the water coming through the softener to make sure the sodium levels are fish friendly. If so, I will add seachem lake salt & epsom to give me back the general hardness that was lost with the removal of the iron. Will keep you posted.

[Mastiffman/ Duramax7Man7]

WOW, that's crazy... What is the reason for the higher level of iron?

[...]

The area where our new property is has very sandy soil and the high iron level (still not as high as many other hard water areas) is present in the ground here. I still don't know if it is ferric (solid) or ferrous (dissolved)...not sure how to identify that as yet...hopefully there is a simple strip kit that can differentiate the 2...the best case scenario now is that the sodium levels are suitable for my fish and I can just fill up post-softening and add back the general hardness...another possible solution is to use a 50/50 mix of unsoftened well water and the softened water...this would halve the iron to 0.25-0.5mg/l and halve whatever sodium levels are present in the softened water...the well guy told us that the more the well is is in use the less concentrated our iron levels will be...I guess the annual rain fall & snow melt will affect the overall levels too; more rain & snow = less concentrated iron, less rain & snow = more concentrated iron...this year the rain fall & snow was low so that could account for the current iron level present...more to come on this interesting new aspect of my fishy journey!

[Mastiffman/ Duramax7Man7]

Ah yes, that makes sense... It should lower the concentrate. Well that's good then.