If you’re going for organic certification, your water must be potable and may also have to pass a number of additional quality tests before you can use it to qualify for certification. If you’re just going for edible food for your own family, you may not need to get anything that’s been officially deemed as potable, but caution is highly recommended here. Since you’re setting up a system that uses the same water in a recycling system repeatedly, for years on end, you want to make sure that the water you start with is as clean and safe as possible. Even tiny amounts of heavy metals, pesticides, parasites, or other disease vectors can remain in your system and become concentrated over time as water is continuously topped off from the same source. Aside from potentially dangerous toxins, it’s probably not worth risking a sudden epidemic of parasites taking out all your fish.
Water that looks and tastes clear doesn’t mean that it is. Water from streams, local wells, or even natural springs can be contaminated with chemicals from the use of herbicides from local farmland, arsenic and mercury from nearby mining operations, industrial effluent that has been dumped into waterways or has seeped down into the groundwater. It’s a good idea to test your well water for a broad spectrum of contaminants anyway, but especially if you’re planning on eating the fish and plants that have grown exclusively in it. Streams and other surface water sources are especially suspect, since the river with last week’s perfectly clear sample may now have a toxic algae bloom a few miles upriver. Even rainwater can collect pollution particles as it falls from the sky and may test on the acidic side and require correction. The problem with access to quality fresh drinking water becomes clearer, doesn’t it? A reliable source of safe water, whether it’s a high quality well or a municipal utility, is critical to the success of your aquaponics venture - no one wants to fear getting sick from those luscious strawberries.
