If you don't have iron in your well water consider yourself blessed. It's one of the most common elements on earth and very common in well water. In the home it produces bad taste issues above 0.3 mg/l in well water and can stain clothes, sinks, toilets, bathtubs etc. Many times it's accompanied by smelly hydrogen sulfide (smells like rotten eggs).
Perhaps your water softening system is taking care of the problem before you notice it?
In aquaculture in tanks etc. the precipitate, ferric iron, collects on the eggs and gills of fish and can cause suffocation or chronic irritation of gills. Optimally it needs to be removed before the well water makes contact with the fish. There is no precipitate initially as the anerobic water first comes out of ground, (water is clear). However with as little as 0.15 mg/l of dissolved oxygen making contact with the ferrous iron, this causes the iron to precipitate becoming known as ferric iron. The iron that coats things is known as iron hydroxide and actually promotes precipitation as the ferrous iron makes contact with it.
Another way to remove it, I didn't mention in my initial post is by settling, as it is heavier than water, but this adds a significant foot print and can be rather slow. The water can warm up or cool down to the ambient temp in the mean time, which may not be wanted depending on the species cultured.
If running well water with iron into a pond of any size, it's usually not a big deal as there is enough area to settle it out.
Last edited by Cecil Baird1; 02/15/16 08:53 AM.
