Well water

[af2018]

Is well water any safer for fish? What do I need to look out for or test it for specifically?
It’s a new build house literally finished this year. On the market 9 days before we found it. Brand new well, brand new everything.
He only built 5 new houses down this culdesac ours was the last one. At the very end is 3 well maintained double wides appears older folks probably live there. But no hoa it’s not turning into full blown suburbia (thank god) so maybe less possibility of pollution but I really have no clue you guys.
I should also add it’s in a really rural area. But the disgusting Kalamazoo river does run near. Like there’s a trail from my property down to the river it’s maybe a mile or so of a walk.

 

[Andy Sager]

Age of the well has nothing to do with the quality of the water. My well water is different from my next door neighbor's well water because I have a deep well and he has a shallow well. My well water is fine out of the tap while his has to be oxygenated before it goes into the fish ponds or the fish are oxygen staved and gasping at the surface.
I would suggest having a water company test your water for contaminants and dissolved oxygen as well as the regular Ph, GH, KH ammonia, nitrite and nitrates before assuming your fish will live in it.

 

[af2018]

That sounds reasonable enough! Thank you Andy.

 

[af2018]

So I have a half answer here that I have a question on. They did test the well obviously for some stuff no nitrite but nitrates are 3.42 mg per liter. Not sure if matters but the 3rd thing on this results thing says no bacteria. Is this a safe level for nitrates for my fish?

Also they have the diameter listed but not the depth lol

 

[Andy Sager]

So I have a half answer here that I have a question on. They did test the well obviously for some stuff no nitrite but nitrates are 3.42 mg per liter. Not sure if matters but the 3rd thing on this results thing says no bacteria. Is this a safe level for nitrates for my fish?

Also they have the diameter listed but not the depth lol

I believe that converts to 3.42 ppm so that is low and okay for your fish HOWEVER, my concern would be why is there nitrates in my well water? Where is it coming from? Is it coming from farmland up the road? ( This was a big problem in Florida that ended up polluting the Everglades and then the bay.) Is it coming from some commercial venture polluting the soil? I'd do a little more investigating this. Okay, there are no bacteria but that doesn't mean there are no contaminants. There are aquarium test kits for Ph, Ammonia, Nitrites, GH, KH, Phosphates and such so that you can do or have a local shop do for you. If all else fails, you could take a small sample of water ( say 1 gallon or so) and use a " test fish" to see if fish will live in the water if you can't get any other answers.
As for the depth of the well, you may need to go to the builder or whomever put the well in to find this information out.
If you have a city water option, you could get that tested as well to see whether it's better or not than your well water.

 

[af2018]

Ok so there’s a mechanic shop on the outer edge of the culdedsac. I already plan to call the EPA when we close and actually start moving in bc it looks more like a junk yard than a mechanic shop and I know for fact epa here at least won’t tolerate that. We had a little scare from the epa when my great grandfather passed away. He had his own “junk yard” back in the woods on his 75 acres. It wasn’t technically a junk yard though. It was just all his cars and kids cars through the years. My great uncles worked night and day to get that **** out of there before the epa came in. But yea anyhow, is that potentially the cause?

There are farms out in this area as well. No huge farms or animal farms within several miles at least in either direction. Mostly all corn fields.

 

[Andy Sager]

Ok so there’s a mechanic shop on the outer edge of the culdedsac. I already plan to call the EPA when we close and actually start moving in bc it looks more like a junk yard than a mechanic shop and I know for fact epa here at least won’t tolerate that. We had a little scare from the epa when my great grandfather passed away. He had his own “junk yard” back in the woods on his 75 acres. It wasn’t technically a junk yard though. It was just all his cars and kids cars through the years. My great uncles worked night and day to get that **** out of there before the epa came in. But yea anyhow, is that potentially the cause?

There are farms out in this area as well. No huge farms or animal farms within several miles at least in either direction. Mostly all corn fields.

If the farms use fertilizers, that's where it could be coming from. The thing to understand is that contaminants don't go straight down into the soil, they follow the flow of the water so in the case of Florida, farms in Central Florida were contaminating the water in South Florida because that's how the water flows. So for example, if you had a deep well and your next door neighbor was a junk yard, the chances are you would not be getting any runoff water from the junk yard but if you had a shallow well, you could be getting bad water from the junk yard.
There is another option and that is to use a filter from a company like Culligan so that it pulls out anything that is in the water. Those filters are much better than anything the aquarium trade has for filtering. We used them at our warehouse that was near Miami airport because the water there was " iffy" from all the discharges from planes and cars. In one warehouse I had, we wanted to do a well and had to go down almost 300 ft to get good water. That's really deep when you consider the water table is so high that homes in S. Florida don't have cellars because they would be under water in some areas.

 

[af2018]

I’m gonna say it’s probably safe to assume it’s not 300 ft down My gut tells me it’s not a deep well.
The builder only builds in summer he owns some company. These houses were like a side project for extra income for him. So he probably just did the minimum on that stuff. I mean I would if I were him ya know

 

[Airborne 82nd]

Any well company could tell you how deep your well is. Is your pump above ground or a submersible well pump?

Measure Well Depth

Measure Well Depth

sunshineworks.com

 

[af2018]

Ummm lol all I can tell you is there’s a thing that sticks out of the ground maybe 12-18” tall.

 

[Andy Sager]

Ummm lol all I can tell you is there’s a thing that sticks out of the ground maybe 12-18” tall.

There should be a line and possibly a bladder attached to that " thing" that sticks out of the ground that leads to a pump ( unless it's an artesian well) that leads to the house lines.