larz1
Koi Kichi
Jul 12, 2006, 9:03 PM
Post #10 of 10
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Re: [dasman] lilly pads in koi pond
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The main thing you want to avoid in pond salt is anticaking agents like YPS.
"Water softener salts with additives to prevent rust and corrosion, such as YPS, are potentially deadly to fish. YPS, yellow prussate of sodium, when exposed to UV (like, sunlight) produces arsenic in the water. Not a good thing. Anytime we are dealing with something unnatural from the perspective of what we would reasonably find in natural water, is a red flag to us, so, stay away from water softening salts with any kind of additives. Period." (source REC at KoiVet)
Otherwise any off the shelf salt is fine. Sea salt and others specifically marketed for aquaria use are no different than ordinary solar salt so long as the solar salt has no additives which must be listed on the label. The ONLY difference is that "Sea Salt for Aquaria" is packaged in small bags and sells for a high price while ordinary pure Solar Salt sells in 40-50 lb bags for less than $5 .
A handy guide for salting ponds safely can be found here;
http://www.cnykoi.com/calculators/calcsalt.asp
Just enter the values you're looking for and "voila" there you have it .
As to Koi munching away on plants. The thing I've noticed is that Koi eat what they NEED. If they have a well balanced diet they tend to leave most plants alone. The exceptions would be water lettuce (which they just can't resist no matter what) and water hyacinth roots (phytoplanktons concregate on them and that's what the Koi are really after)
Last year we had a potatoe vine (ornamental, not real potatoes) growing on the edge of our pond. The vines/leaves hung over into the water and all of our Koi would snack on it daily. Our water lillies, celery, iris, papyrus, etc... on the other hand were left virtually untouched.
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