Rusty grit inside pipes

Sorry for the long post...

I just put in a new well after suffering for years with a shallow well that had a lot of rust and sediment.

At first the water was clean and clear with little visible rust. I noticed about a week or two after the well was finished that when I filled the tub the water had a yellow/light orange tinge and smelled like iron.

I figured that I had hard water, which is not unusual in New Jersey. While I was installing a new softener I noticed a water pipe that I had just cut had a lot of orange slime/grit inside the pipe. I recognized this as what we used to get out of the old well. When the old well was on it's last legs, it pulled up very mucky stuff!

I wonder if the well water is not hard, but the pipes have so much built up in them that it's skewing my recent tap water analysis (pre-softener hardness was 120 ppm, 7 gpg. Maybe the new well is not that hard, but it's pulling this slime off the pipes?

Now that there is a softener, will the softened water help to reduce this buildup or is there a better strategy? I'm afraid that I won't be getting good test results from my tap because of this build up.

Thanks!

Will Softened water

This is a follow up question to my own post:

Will softened water slowly disolve the rust in my pipes?

Meaning, will this resolve itself by using a softener?

Thanks

How old is the house? What kind of water pipe do you have? Copper, plastic, galvanized?