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[Corona688]

I'd probably be a lot more comfortable with them if there was a reliable way of getting stone on aquifier maps without having to breach your first season.

Bring it with you.  You can buy it on the embark screen dirt cheap.  Even weird ones like pitchblende.

[DuckBoy2]

Theres nothing quite like building your entire fort in between 3 aquifer layers.  Its grate!

(Though getting the stone for all those grates is a giant pain)

I think I'ma have to do another one of those... (last one ended when all the miners fell in the aquifer... dummies)

[MrWiggles]

Lucky, mine got flash frozen. Destroyed the pick. I had to wait for the the next caravan.

[LealNightrunner]

I recently tried to pierce a 3 layer aquifer, and here's what I learned:

Cave-ins require a lot of knowledge to produce proper results with a minimum of damage.  The one I tried resulted in the unlucky death of the mason who got picked to initiate the cave-in, along with half of my food stores being entombed in a perpetual deluge of water.  Also, I had an issue with a floor of Open Sky caving on to my last surviving miner and entombing his pick in ice.  I didn't try to explain that one.

Breaching with pumps is trivial if you have a single layer aquifer, doable with a two layer, and anything above three, don't bother.  The triple aquifer embark I had had two non-smoothable aquifer layers, and a final third layer of aquifer stone.  The issue arises that with soil layers, you have to construct walls to block the flow of water, and with stone layers you at least don't have to build new walls, you can just smooth, but either way you're stuck reducing the size of your breach.  I started with a 7x7 (reduced to 5x5 by walls) on the first soil layer and couldn't muster enough pumping to fix the next level, and then below that, I still had a meager 3x3 space to stop the third aquifer layer, and you can't even reasonably put a pump in there.

You can try draining a higher aquifer layer into a lower aquifer layer to help with managing the outflow.  Just note, this is FLOW, and it will shove your dwarves down any trench you dig to try and help eat up the upper aquifer water.  My experience was 95% of the time they could eventually escape, but even still I had a casualty or two from flow shoving them down a level where water isn't draining.

My experiences say if your map freezes water at some/all points and you can afford to expose your breach to the outside, go with that.  Just note if it's seasonal freezing when to halt all mining and get everyone out of there before they get iced.  If your map doesn't freeze... well, mod or outright cheat.  Breaching aquifers with pumps, especially triple layer or more, is a years long task.  Cave-ins are probably the fastest way but they offer a lot of risk for reward if you don't plan ahead.

Oh yeah.  Bring stone.  Lots.  Cause odds are you won't have any for a while.

[Eric Blank]

I can enjoy aquifers in less hospitable and savage/evil biomes. They will provide you with infinite, clean, zombie-free water, and as said before, as great a flow of this infinite water as you desire, so long as not all wall tiles on that z-level are destroyed. They make the dining room waterfall simple and efficient. It's true that I avoid them usually, but really that's because I'm too lazy to actually deal with them most of the time. You'll bloody well need one on evil, freezing tundras, which I love so much.

[Qinetix]

  , well I kinda hate aquifers since i like to dig inside the layers to make my fortress , but i still don't get it why my fortress always dies at 50 population 

[MythagoWoods]

The ONLY time I hate aquifers is when I have events like the last fort I made with one.

Dig down one Z level, everything is fine.  Dig down one more Z level, "Dig canceled: Damp stone" for the ENTIRE FRICKEN LEVEL.  I literally dug out almost the entire area and put downwards staircase... and hit water.  I had to abandon before I had so much as a migrant wave since I couldn't go any further down.

When THAT doesn't happen... I like them for reasons previously stated, constant fresh, clean, wellable water that never freezes.

[Hans Lemurson]

I have no problem with aquifers.  The first time I encountered one when I was still learning the game, I managed to tunnel through 6 z-levels of damp puddingstone.  Pumps are your friend.

[Aussiemon]

I have been inspired to find and break through the biggest (hopefully 4+) aquifer I can find... I'll post pics later

[Schmlok]

For the pump method, it helps to dig a trench at the end of the pump and wall off around it, forcing the water back into the aquifer.

Repeat and wall off using embark stone or wood.  Ive yet to have an aquifer in sedimentary, no smoothing for me

[GaxkangtheUnbound]

Aquifers are perfect for drowning traps.
I had a vortex drag all of the corpses and water down into the draining chamber through a grate into the aquifer.
I then salvage the goods and move on.

[Sivere]

For the pump method, it helps to dig a trench at the end of the pump and wall off around it, forcing the water back into the aquifer.

Repeat and wall off using embark stone or wood.  Ive yet to have an aquifer in sedimentary, no smoothing for me

Smoothing is the easiest way of dealing with it. One pump, quick and easy. But if it's some kind of soil, or sand, I just use double pumps on opposite sides of the up/down stairway, which then dump the water back into the aquifer.

I once screwed myself over on a bizarre desert biome. The embark said there was at least one aquifer, and some trees (or rather, cacti). Turns out the embark lied.

 After searching for a year, my fort shrivelled and died of thirst, because I was too stubborn and refused to dig to the caverns to set up a well. Too little, too late.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[iEpinephrine]

I wouldn't say I actually LIKE Aquifers... but I have nothing against them.  After I mastered the ring-cookie-cutter technique of aquifer breaching they stopped even registering as a feature.  Though I've never encountered an aquifer 1z below the surface, that might suck a little I guess...

I do like that they provide a lot of rad opporunities for awesome water mains systems, adding and removing infinte water, very neat...

[GreatWyrmGold]

Not me. My one fort that I encountered an aquifer in completely flooded my bedroom level. When my engraver tried to engrave the walls he tried to do so from inside the completely flooded room.
Then I realised that forbidding the doors should work. So I did.
I'm sad I lost that save file.

[Rose]

I like to embark on triple aquifers and never breach them, relying on traders for my stone needs.