Hello Fruitnut, >What problems are you having that you think might be >due to well water, iron deficiency? We have three kinds of water here, rain-water, unfiltered well water and filtered well water. The unfiltered well water has a lot of H2S and leaves a yellow scum on anything it repeatedly runs over. The filtered water has had the H2S removed. I've noticed long term watering with unfiltered well water seems to stunt plants. For example, we have been using unfiltered well water on our blackberry patch. The first 2 years, we had nice fruit harvests. Last year, there was a 50% decline in fruit. This year, we are not getting anything to ripen. The plant mass is about half last years. We get some berries, but they don't mature. Two grape vines in this garden are 4 years old and have not put out more than 10 or 15 leaves the last 2 years. We have been using a soaker hose on the blackberry patch. The soaker hose has gone from black to a rusty brown. I'm sure the ground has even more of this precipitate. The filtered well water may be equally hard on plants, since the filtering does nothing for the hardness or high alkalinity. We have a second garden which has been entirely watered with 'filtered water'. It is only 2 years old. I'm concerned it will start displaying 'stunted plant' problems next year. One thing that puzzles me is our asparagus. The stuff grows wild here. We planted a commercial variety and it doesn't seem to mind the well water. I've read it has been labeled a 'hard to grow' plant. Maybe it likes limey ground. >A really limey soil will be almost impossible to change. I can accept that. There is lots of plant life out here, though the variety seems limited. The wild plants make due with rain, though.

How many fish do you have in your pond? What kind of fish - koi, goldfish, other? How large is the pond? Do you have any shade? Plants? How often do you feed? Is the temperature you mentioned, 94, water temperature or air temperature? The air temperatures here reached 97 yesterday, but my water temperature was 80 degrees, which is acceptable. I'm not too concerned about the Ph. Mine tends to run about 80, the fish are accustomed to it. Sudden Ph changes can be stressful, but if it stays consistent, I wouldn't worry about that too much unless it goes above 85. Then you may want to consider Ph Down to slowly bring the Ph to a more acceptable level. Your more pressing problem is the nitrites, which are toxic to fish. This is caused by the ammonia excreted from the fish waste, even from their gills. Your nitrites are not extremely high at this point, but you may need to add an ammonia binder to detoxify it while you work on bringing the levels down. Nitrates are not harmful to fish, but at high levels can lead to other problems, such as methane gas production, which is not good. I would stop feeding the fish for a few days, do a partial water change, and clean out any debris that may be decaying in the pond. If you're overstocked, as many of us are, you may need to look into increasing your bio filtration or rehoming a few of the fish. I'm not an advocate of adding bottled bio bacteria, since it is a naturally occurring bacteria, but you may want to do this to help bring your bacteria concentration up to help deal with the load. If you have a UV, turn it off until the bacteria has settled, a few days should be more than enough time. Also, if the fish have been spawning, that will also bring the nitrite levels up. Keep the aerator going.

I take a different view on KH and pH testing, especially for people who don't test a lot. For people who test a lot they already understand a lot so different tests have a lot more value to them. pH is a tricky test. As ajames54 said you really have to understand more than many people want to. Like time of day, but there are lots of other things too. I've read more than a few posts over the years where people measure pH and get something off the chart 10+ and freak out. They post what to do, or worst ask a pet store clerk, and someone will tell them to add a pH down product. They add the product and pH is now 6. More freaking out, more chemicals. Understanding pH Is not something that comes easy to people. It's a complex concept. The main trouble with testing pH is it only tells you what the pH of the water in the sample at that exact moment in time. But pH can be very dynamic. For example testing the pH of distilled water tells you...nothing. Might be 3,14,7,5 in 4 different tests taken 1 minute apart. In the hands of someone who knows what they're doing a pH test is certainly very useful. But for people not that into all this it can be a ticking time bomb of bad info. KH on the other hand tells you a lot more about pH. If KH say is around 5 ppm I know the pH in that pond swings, maybe a lot. It tells me I can't predict what the pH of the pond is going to be tonight or tomorrow or the next day. If KH is say 40-70 ppm I'm pretty sure pH is pretty stable and probably in a very good range. If KH is above say 150 ppm I know pH is very stable and will be stable for weeks to come (in a normal backyard type pond) and I know pH is on the high side, 8-10. A pond owner keeping pH in the optimal range is going to be an expert pond keeper. They test many water parameters often, maybe daily, and know how to adjust parameters safely. They've probably learned all this the hard way, or they're in the process of learning. The vast majority of pond keepers have little interest in all that stuff. They want their fish to stay alive and could care less if pH is "optimal" (so the whites on their koi are as perfect as possible or whatever). For them the only thing that should be a concern is stable pH. A pH of 8-10 is fine. Many serious Koi keepers keep their water in that pH range. There is debate on whether keeping pH near 7.4 is really all that important. So that's why I suggest people start with KH and really don't do pH tests. If it turns out you really enjoy testing water, tracking results, adding stuff to adjust parameters and measuring the result then sure, by all means, get more test kits like pH and have a blast. It is fun, but not for everyone. Ammonia and nitrite is similar. If you're measuring ammonia on a fairly regular basis it's not really very useful to measure nitrite. If ammonia is 0 every time then nitrite is going to be 0 too. If ammonia is high then nitrite is also probably a problem, or going to be a problem. If this is the first time ammonia has ever been tested and it's high it means the fish have probably been living with this for a long time which means nitrite hasn't been a problem because the fish are still alive. The bottom line is high ammonia should kick off all kinds of actions like finding out why and what to do. That may include testing nitrite. But for most cases fixing the ammonia issue fixes any nitrite threat. Testing nitrite is useful in specific cases, like high fish loads. Or starting up a pond. Or coming out of winter. But most back yard pond keepers measure nitrite maybe a few times in the summer. That doesn't really tell you much. If you had a nitrite problem the fish would be dead already. When measured a couple of times in the summer the chances of you hitting a window where nitrite was just becoming a problem is low. And of course most backyard pond keepers only test after fish start dying, although many still don't according to posts in forums. So to me, if I can get a pond keeper to not just test ammonia and KH, but get a basic understanding of why they're testing those things and what to do with the results than they're keeping a pond better than 99.9999% of Water Gardeners and 90% of Koi Pond keepers. Those 2 things cover almost all pond chemistry. Understanding pH frustrates many people to the point of wondering why they should test at all. Taking pH off the table makes learning what's actually important much more possible. I think people get it if we can just say KH measures the amount of baking soda in your water and you want it to be 150 ppm or more. That they get and may actually do and greatly improve their pond. Of course with the warning only adjust KH when ammonia is zero. If a person wants to get into testing for pH, nitrite, nitrate, phosphorus, O2, DOC, etc., then super. But very few people want to get into the hobby that deep. And I'm not sure testing all those things really improves anything. I've read posts from people who did this kind of in depth testing and started messing with water parameters and end up with dead fish. That was OK with them because it was a learning experience. I don't think people should get the idea that lots of testing = best home for fish. It's more what you do with the data that matters.

Any amount of ammonia and nitrites are considered toxic. A low level of nitrate is acceptable, say below 40. I hope you're doing a fishless cycle! Otherwise you should prepare for fish deaths, too. You want to monitor your water parameters as you cycle your tank. Every day, take a reading of NH3 - not total ammonia, free ammonia. You'll see it rise pretty high. When it starts dropping, begin testing for nitrite. When ammonia is a 0, you should see nitrites rising. They'll start spiking, just like the ammonia. When nitrites are 0, test for nitrate. You should have a low level of them. That is when you know your tank is fully cycled. Now, every few days you should test your water after it's cycled just to make sure you haven't had bacteria die off or overloaded your tank. Every week you should change out a percentage of the water. How large is your tank?