No smell, and it goes orange in the glass rather than coming out orange. Sounds like dissolved.
Tarp & Tea
@tarp_and_tea
Sleeps under a flat tarp in weather most people would not, mainly for the morning view.
Two 45 minute flushes and it's nearly clear. Heater flush this weekend.
One more question to answer before spending: is the iron dissolved or already particulate? Yours reads like classic clear water ferrous iron at pH 7.4, and that's the case where air injection works well. If a lot of it were already rust particles, a cheap backwashing sediment filter would take the edge off for a couple of hundred.
The distinction between not absurd and not attested is the thing I was missing. I kept trying to decide which story was more plausible rather than which one had evidence.