Well Water

[iseeweed]

Hello everyone,
Simple question(or maybe not)
First of all, I am very new to the hobby. I have a small system of about 45 gallons w/a 250w metal halide. From day one, I have only used steam distilled water. I have had very good success with the tank including sps stuff.
My question is, has anyone had success using well water. My brother in law is going to try. He has had some tanks a few years back. He plans on growing some coral.
One of the LFS I frequent is using well water. It seems to me there may be some PO4 probs??
Does anyone have any advice on water from the ground?? Treatments??

 

[Anonymous]

It depends on the make up of the water. Have it tested by your local extension office. It could be perfect or it could be a disaster. The test will go a long way in letting you know.

 

[Anonymous]

Set up a RODI on at my facility with well water source. DI cartridge died in a couple days. Silica content is out this world in our well water 8O

 

[Anonymous]

It depends on the make up of the water. Have it tested by your local extension office. It could be perfect or it could be a disaster. The test will go a long way in letting you know.

Ditto that. My well water was lousy with phosphates as I lived in a rural area where there was a lot of runoff from farmland into the aquifer. Have your water tested, and then let those results guide you in choosing a system to treat the water, such as a RO/DI with extra filtration.

Your county extension office will have water testing kits for a nominal fee.

 

[Anonymous]

I have seen a reef tank set up with well water and it was an algae disaster of unbelievable proportions.

It all depends on what is in your water though, but I would be suprised to find well water that is good for reef tanks.

We had real good luck with freshwater african ciclids using it though!

 

[Anonymous]

My well water was so hard I also used to keep africans with great sucess. It was also great for planted FW tanks-all those nutrients made for great plant growth.

 

[Anonymous]

It all depends on your locality, and rather there is a corn field or a military base around you. In my case, it is both, so the well water is full of nitrate (fertilizer) and nasties (rocket fuel) that it is RO'ed before they are allowed to put into the water supply. Geological issue such as ion imbalance can cause issue too. In short, test it and see what is in it.

 

[Anonymous]

<shudder> you live next to a base? I used to work on one. I'd watch them dump barriers of waste into holes they dug into the ground 8O They'd routinly dump desiel fuel over all the weeds, 55g barriers DAILY. I don't even want to know what they'd do behind closed doors, if that's what they do in the open

 

[Anonymous]

The idea is to save 5 hours of work and $50 now, and let our kid spent a few months of time to clean it up for about 4 million dollars.

I can see that our future generations may need to electrolysize water into hydrogen and oxygen, and burn them back to water to get something drinkable.

 

[iseeweed]

Maybe we can just collect the water from our future hydrogen vehicles and dump that stuff in our tanks! :roll: