The iron is a problem: do you have a degassing tower? A green sand filter
for the iron? There are folks around here that "specialize" in water - maybe
you need to open a new thread asking for help specifically with the iron
properties of your water. Do you have a water analysis from a lab that may
set forth what all is actually IN your water????

Lee

"Mickey" wrote in message
...
I get a white mineral build up on everything in the pond. The iron levels
in
the well water are around 25ppm enough to leave a ring of rust around
anything. The minerals also build up in plumbing and in the pump. I don't
need really soft water I would just like it if everything did not turn
white
from mineral build up. I will get a sample tested to see what the numbers
are exactly.

"Lee B." wrote in message
...
When you say your water is "hard", what do you mean? What is your KH and
GH
levels? The reason why I ask is that fish *like* hard water; so do the
biobugs in your filter. Most of us end up putting baking soda into the
water
to increase the KH, especially if you have a bead type filter, which
needs
a
KH of over 200 in order to properly "feed" the biobugs - so that it will
function to optimum. With well water, you need to be more worried about
things like iron and sulphur - not to mention that there's no oxygen in
well
water and it needs to be aerated.

But to answer your original question: initially I thought that if
softened
water was good for me, it would be good for the fish. Then their
coloring
started to suffer, and investigation into possible reasons led me to
bypass
the softener when I do water exchanges, etc.

Lee

"Mickey" wrote in message
...
I have hard well water that is not softened. Is there a way to soften
it
?
have thought about using the water from the house that is softened but
it
is
city water and that might get expensive fast I have about 3000 gallons
of
pond water. Maybe I will start topping off the pond with soft house
water
after doing an initial fill with well water.