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[Newton]

So my fortress is at a location where there is no water, or at least standing water or streams.  When I embarked it warned me about an aquifer and that I may have trouble finding stone, but so far I have not located it.  The ground level is almost all red sand, and I've been digging out extensive mines underneath in search of water (mostly for injured dwarves).  Is there any suggestions that you all have in finding this aquifer?  What Z levels are aquifer's usually found on?

[Jingles]

I beliveits generally the last soil layer down that they are found in. Generally thats 2 or three z layers down.  I'm not sure if its possible but it could also be that the aquifeir doesn't cover the entire map  In which case digging down in the corners would help find it..

[Oneir]

On the embark screen you can view the different soil layers and whatnot on the right-most screen, yeah? This will also tell you about the presence of an aquifer (or more precisely, which layers of soil or (rarely) stone are aquifers) through blue squiggly lines to the right of the soil layer. To make things more confusing, not only are these only true for the specific biome that is being displayed at that moment (the one at the center of your embark rectangle by default, though you can cycle through whichever you may have with the F# keys), but occasionally they do not even make up the entire layer.
I don't much like the idea of aquifers and so haven't embarked anywhere with a major one, but in some areas (such as yours) they may be your only source of water. If you don't remember which layer of which biome has th aquifer then what you'll want to do is dig a few mineshafts (lots of up/down stairs, basically) down through any soil layers you may have (unless you've got conglomerate, that can sometimes be an aquifer). Really you don't need water for all that much beyond taking care of wounded dwarves (unless you want a water-filled moat), and you may find that you have some trouble dealing with it. For this, we have the wiki.

[Boatmurderer]

Unfortunately, the best way to find an aquifer is from the Embark screen: search for which biome has the aquifer, and where you see the Aquifer designation is the soil layer that contains it (usually directly above your first stone layer, from my experience). Since you don't know where it was, I'd say pick soil areas and core-sample stairs down until you hit water or stone. If stone, try somewhere else. The disadvantage of this is having your ground all swiss-cheesed. A not-so-legitimate way to avoid this would be to save-scum (save, dig around until you find it, then quit without saving. When you reload, go where you know the aquifer is and dig down to it).

If nobody is injured yet, I wouldn't worry about it too much. If somebody is injured, I'd evaluate how important that dwarf is. If you just started and he's your best miner, definitely search like all get-out. If he's your 15th of 34 farmers, let the little bugger die. No use wasting a good dwarf to take care of a bad dwarf.

If he's a noble... laugh, THEN let the little bugger die. 

EDIT: Oneir beat me to it.

[Newton]

Thanks for your help on this guys.

If an aquifer is less then the whole Z level, what's the minimum size it will be?  I've been digging around in the only soil level I've got, so before I start in on the rock, I'd just like to get a general idea.

And to answer the question, I'd like the water for injured dwarves.  I've already lost 2 legendary miners to lack of water after getting injured and would like to prevent my army from suffering a similar fate.

[Oneir]

I don't know if there is a minimum size for it, but I'd say just try digging around on all areas of your map, sometimes the biomes are funny and you'll end up with, say, two functionally identical mountain biomes right next to one another. (though obviously here there would be a difference of an aquifer) You don't need to bother digging through the stone if it isn't on this list, though.

[Kagus]

There's no minimum size except for however big the biome it's in is.

And you're more likely to find an aquifer by going down rather than side to side.  The aquifer isn't always a soil layer, it could quite easily be some sort of porous rock (as listed on that wiki article).  If you can't find the aquifer by digging down, look around the edges of the map for soil types or arrangements that you don't recognize from the area you're digging in.  That should mark a different biome.

Also, check how many levels of soil you just dug through.  "Dry" maps will have one to two z-levels of soil before hitting rock, whereas places with an aquifer can go down five or six levels before hitting stone.