How long you would temper a new trout---at most about 30 minutes?
At 64,000GPD, thats more than 24 hours for tempering. From my limited experience, almost all fish stress and disease seem to be water quality related. You are lucky enough to be able to change it relatively quickly.
You're probably right. It may be the sudden influx of iron particles irritating their gills that is more of a problem than the PH change which may not be as quick as I thought. However I'm thinking with the iron it may not be bad to pulse the well either. It would give them more time to adapt.
One thing that makes me feel better is I'm not alone. I had more than one trout farmer on a regional list serve I belong to say raising brook trout is a pain in the ... and they have similar problems. This would explain why it's hard to find brook trout suppliers vs. rainbows.
