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Hello, my name is Jimmy C and I live in East Texas (Alba) I have retired from the D.P.S. and dug me a fishing pond. We sent off a water sample last week for testing and it came back with a PH of 6.51 and Iron was at 15.1 PPM. That sounds high to me and was wondering if it was harmful to the fish we are going to stock?
The pond is being filled by a water well we dug. The well is 240 ft.deep with beautiful clear water but has high Iron content. Have not stocked the pond yet waiting to hear on what I can do to make the water suitable for the fish we want to put in.
Plan on Liming it today to help bring up the PH and other advice would be greatly appreciated.

Jimmy

jimmyc, I saw your original post, and wasn't sure how to answer it because I don't have any numbers. We have an extremely high iron content level in a brood pond. In fact, the water's a very dark tea color and iron ore is everywhere. Personally, I've had no ill effects from the iron. The fish have gown well, and I have a good population of lilies, reeds, and the occasional primrose.

I don't have a well, but the O2 might be an issue. Guys that use well water for ponds may be able to help you with that.

Hopefully Cecil will see this. He'll know.

That's really a lot of iron but if it's the precipitating kind it should settle out in a few weeks after the well is shut down. Typically the iron laden water first comes out of the ground gin clear but when it's oxidized the iron precipitates and turns the water color anywhere from a smokey green to yellow to tea colored depending on how many mg of iron it contains.

The larger the pond you are filling the more likely the iron will settle out before coloring the entire pond.

I would wait for the iron to settle out before liming but have no experience with liming and iron so could be way off base with that.

My 1/10th acre trout pond gets 45 gpm well water 24/7 in the summer at 2.5 mg/l. It turns the pond a smokey green and the overall cocentration is 0.4 mg/l. If the pond was much smaller the pond would take on a tea color and the pond iron concentration would be closer to 2.5 mg/l.

Thank you Cecil, my pond is close to 3/4 acres and my well is pumping 25 gpm.
I put 50 lbs of lime in this morning to raise the PH a little according to the guy that will be stocking my pond. He said that the lime will raise it one point. Right now my PH is in the 6.5 range. Do you know what is a good PH range for stocking fish?
Also, I have been reading a lot about fertilizer what is the purpose for fertilizer? Is it for growing grasses or what? I am new to this pond stuff so some of my questions might sound dumb.
Our pond is brand new as is the well. We are about � full now and hope the rain will help us get it to full pool.

Again, thank you for your advice.

Jimmy

Cecil, can you comment on any potential O2 issues and how to mitigate them?

Welcome Jimmy,

Fertilizing is to promote a phytoplankton bloom. They (the critters) are the bottom rung of the food chain essentially. Everything else above it kinda counts on that solid base. Many ponds naturally have plenty of phytoplankton. As long as you don't have turbidity issues, folks often measure the health/density of the bloom via Secchi disk.
Here's a useful post about fertilizing.
Ewest's fertilizer info

Here's a post from a guy discussing pond color and folks advising on bloom/fertilizer.
Pond color

Welcome to Pond Boss, jimmyc!

Who are you going to for your fish stocking?

Am I missing something? The fish stocking guy said 50 pounds of lime would raise the water pH in the 3/4 acre pond one point? Is that correct?

There is a guy about 20 miles from our home that I might use. I believe their name is C & W Catfish farm in Jamestown, Texas.