Salt & Your Pond

It has came to my attention that some pond maintenance people are being rather liberal in their use of salt. Now before I go into a rant, every situation is different and each pond has different needs, but chances are you don't want to use salt in your pond. If you have a 'Koi Pond' or 'Reflecting Pool' than go a head, but if you have a water garden you don't want salt! Let me be more specific, if you have ANY plants in your pond do not use salt. These companies have listened to their 'koi guy' and assumed that one situation fits all. Koi like a little salt in their water, it is a great treatment for their health and to protect their slime coat. Most basic parasites can be taken care of with a salt dip. But if you have any plants, over 1% salt can begin to damage floating plants and much more will damage or kill most pond plants.

Here's another circumstance that you need to keep in mind. If you have your pond set at 1% salt and do a water change, you still have nearly 1% salt. If your water evaporates, the salt does not. Make sure to check your salt level before adding more, because chances are you mainly have the percent before the water change or loss. If you have any plants and you have maintenance done with salt they are probably going to put too much in. If you have salt before the change, and they add more you probably have way too much.

Once again, if you have a koi pond or other non-plant pond, go ahead with in reason. Even without plants you don't want over 3-4% unless you have spoken with a koi specialist. We have treated sick fish with 7%, but they get really slow and they can die with prolonged exposure or any greater percent. Now I do not claim to be an expert with koi, so make sure to talk to an expert before doing anything with salt treatments. But make sure to remember that if you do much over 1% salt, you're going to really damage some plants. Just something to ponder.