waring: well water can have ammonia

I have had a hard time getting to my newsreader, so I weathered this
calamity with the help of the pond forum on GardenWeb. I was feeding
my fish in the gf pond, and noticed that they had no appetite. I had
to net out the entire feeding every time. I had a spring algae bloom,
so I had to get rid of that to be able to see them and judge what was
wrong. So Rolf Nelson sold me some Algae Fix and some bactieria and I
went to work on the water. Sure enough, all the fish were just moping
around the bottom and not swimming any more than absolutely necessary.
There were no signs of oxygen depletion, so I got a test kit. I did
the test wrong and didn't get the needed warning of the ammonia, but
the next morning, my whitest fish had red streaks in their fins. So, I
tested again and started the water changes immediately. Since I am on
a well, and have done massive changes many times before, that's what I
did this time too. The thing is, the reading didn't improve. Finally,
I figured out to test my tap water, and sure enough, that was my
problem. Nothing twenty bucks worth of Amquell wouldn't fix. Of
course, the twenty bucks worth of algae fix went out with the water
change and I have had to use twice as much Clarity Max because I had to
replace that, too. Oh, well, at least my fishies are happy again.
I just wanted to post this as a heads-up for those out there that are
on a well. It doesn't automatically mean you have safe water. This
does mean that we now have to address this issue for our own health
even though we drink bottled water.
Does this mean we have to get a filtration system?