Salt in pond water?

[callingcolleen1]

Didn't she use a heater and circulate the water good around the heater??

 

[Dave 54]

The black thing you see in the water was the heater

rgrds

Dave

 

[callingcolleen1]

Must have not been a very good heater, and not enough water circulating in front of heater to evenly heat the water better. As long as the fish are inside now and she's happy, that good, cause it can be lots of work and restless nights worrying about fish in pond!
I use the 1500 watt cattle trough heater, find it works better when very cold than the much more costly to buy pond heaters. Yes, does suck the volts, but we got pretty reasonable electric bills here. The coldest winter, plugged in heater for most of the month, I think it upped the bill by maybe 100 at the worst.

 

[CometKeith]

Here is my sculpture from last winter. I add a little salt in the early spring to help with their slime coat, but I don't know if that really does anything. I usually just use it for salt baths when needed for sick fish. It has saved several of my fish.

 

[waynefrcan]

My friend in Fort St John lost koi after koi due to the temperatures they had to endure , we found that in the spring the larger koi had lost nearly all of their gills bar a bit at the top of the gill.
At first we thought it something else but eventually came to the conclusion that as the weather heated up and the pond bacame warmer the little bit of gill space they had left meant that they couldn't survive.
For the last few years after much discussion with her it was decided to move her fish to an indoor pond in her husbands work shop.
The net result of this being that all her fish came through with flying colours with no more deaths of her large koi , which she is very pleased with.
She uses her barrel filters from outside on the indoor pond so everything is matured well for them to live throughout the winter months.

These two photo's bellow will give you an idea what she was up against prior to the move indoors


View attachment 48688 View attachment 48689


Just look at the depth of ice she had to contend having to chop holes in the ice daily god knows the stress she was forced to put them under by using an axe but what lse could you do to maintain an airway .
I've never in all my koi keeping days seen air bubbles form a beautiful sculpture like the photo shown above .



rgrds

Dave

Are you saying that the black heater is under that sculpter? If so it's too crappy a heater for Canada winters. That's like only 100 watts. I hate these garbage items that claim to work in our cold winters. I bought a pond breather and it iced up solid when it got really cold.

 

[Dave 54]

Here is my sculpture from last winter. I add a little salt in the early spring to help with their slime coat, but I don't know if that really does anything. I usually just use it for salt baths when needed for sick fish. It has saved several of my fish.

Keith you would do better adding garlic to your food in the spring , it has two properties that are benificial to fish.
1) Garlic helps kick strat fish into eating food ( a good trick if you also have a sick fish refusing food ) they go mad for it like cats and cat litter.
2) garlic activley helps protect fish against parasites much needed in the spring when our fish are at their weakest, the thought is that it makes the fish taste wrong to the parasite who then debunk en-mass.
You can buy koi food that already has this ingreadient in with the weatgerm pellets or chop the garlic finely add to the food leave to permiate a while then feed.
You can make a garlic extract or buy it as an extract its made by that well known aquatic firm Seachem , another trick is to mix in the tubed garlic you buy for cooking
Dont get me wrong I'm not knocking salt but it has its place in the treatment of fish Prefrably as a short term dip to help rid fish of parasites or for use in a quarentine tank but never in a pond .
The problem is you can never rid the pond of salt as it doesnt evaporate you can only do this via alott of water changes but if you add salt each time you are never acctually rid of it and it slowly builds up.
As I previously said if koi or any other fresh water fish wanted to live in an enviromeny that had salt in it then they would habe been born marine fish , remember they are a fresh water species not marine.

rgrds

Dave

 

[Dave 54]

Are you saying that the black heater is under that sculpter? If so it's too crappy a heater for Canada winters. That's like only 100 watts. I hate these garbage items that claim to work in our cold winters. I bought a pond breather and it iced up solid when it got really cold.

Thats why we actively worked on getting her fish indoors we pointed out that the fish must have been stressed to the eyeballs now kudos to her making an airway it must have been soul destroying chopping a hole each day but folks learn from their mistakes as they progress in the hobby , she is now progressing up the fish keeping ladder
It is our job to gently lead the way and educate as we all move up in the hobby to becoming proficient in the hobby .
What I do find frustrating is when you try and help but get those who think they know best but don't because something has always worked for them but in acctual fact dont.an example is one guy I know called Lee E ( wont give his full name and not to be mixed up with my good friend Lee F) who ended up wt a small 300 gallon imperial pond with 32 koi you try everything to point out that they are heading for a fall due to the wrong sized filtration and being hugely overstocked yet Lee E knew best and ended up loosing all his koi

rgrds

Dave

 

[callingcolleen1]

Lots of people get sucked into cappy pond stuff. I just find things that work very good that last a long time, like the bright orange heater for cattle from Peavy Mart (farmers store) that is only 25 bucks to buy and I always have a spare heater just in case. Been using that heater for two decades now. I have had the actual pond heater that sells for 100 and is 1200 watts, that one died long time ago and did not work as well as the "cattle trough heater"!

Then I feed my fish all summer this high quality Puppy food, no fillers, no grains, made right here in Alberta, called" Origin" dog food, works great and my fish love it way way more than the overpriced koi food, laugh if you want, but it works very well, Koi are over 20 years old and very very large. No sick fish here, good dog food keeps happy and healthy!

 

[Mucky_Waters]

My friend in Fort St John lost koi after koi due to the temperatures they had to endure , we found that in the spring the larger koi had lost nearly all of their gills bar a bit at the top of the gill.
At first we thought it something else but eventually came to the conclusion that as the weather heated up and the pond bacame warmer the little bit of gill space they had left meant that they couldn't survive.
For the last few years after much discussion with her it was decided to move her fish to an indoor pond in her husbands work shop.
The net result of this being that all her fish came through with flying colours with no more deaths of her large koi , which she is very pleased with.
She uses her barrel filters from outside on the indoor pond so everything is matured well for them to live throughout the winter months.

These two photo's bellow will give you an idea what she was up against prior to the move indoors


View attachment 48688 View attachment 48689


Just look at the depth of ice she had to contend having to chop holes in the ice daily god knows the stress she was forced to put them under by using an axe but what lse could you do to maintain an airway .
I've never in all my koi keeping days seen air bubbles form a beautiful sculpture like the photo shown above .


Dave

Fish can and do survive under ice without any airway holes. It seems to me daily chopping holes in the ice would be more detrimental that just leaving the fish be.
Are you saying the fish lost their gills because of the cold water, because I have never heard of that happening before.

 

[Craig58]

I'm in agreement with Mucky. Chopping a hole in the ice daily should never be done. Now i know it's not as cold here as there but the one time I had to make a hole in the ice, i used boiling water. My wife boiled and I carried. Used a large pot on the ice and kept replacing the water in the pot with boiling water carried from inside. (gotta be careful!) Put in the boiling water, and spin the pot around working it deeper and deeper. Went through about 6" of ice. Saves on the chopping of the ice. i only did this as the pond had been iced over for over two weeks at that point. The bubbler kept it open about 12 hrs and then it iced over again for another couple of weeks. By than the temps started to warm up.

Like Colleen I also use the cattle trough heaters. I have two 1500W heaters, one for the upper and one for the lower pond. We just set them in the pond and only plug them in if the pond ices over for more than a week. After 24 hrs, we unplug them again. I find them expensive to run all the time. With two of them, the first year we had our pond we ran them 24x7. Had like a $300 increase in our electric bill!

Craig

 

[sissy]

I have always added gralic to my fishies food in the spring to help them eat and help there immune system .I bought a pond heater after the 2010 winter .Just in case .

 

[Dave 54]

Fish can and do survive under ice without any airway holes. It seems to me daily chopping holes in the ice would be more detrimental that just leaving the fish be.
Are you saying the fish lost their gills because of the cold water, because I have never heard of that happening before.

Yes saw the photos pf her dead koi all the gills were grey appart from a small bit at the top either she had some sort of gill rot or it was the intense cold my only other thought would have been KHV but I doubt that was the problem as most of her smaller koi survived it was just her big ones that died .

rgrds

Dave

 

[Dave 54]

I'm totally in agreement with Mucky_waters as I say we live and learn by our mistakes Craig

rgrds

Dave

 

[callingcolleen1]

If the smaller fish survived, but the bigger ones died, that usually indicates a gas build up under the ice, and maybe combined with low oxygen, and the big fish died first cause they breathe more so they couldn't get enough oxygen to support them.
The big fish also comsumed more of the gas and that burned their gills. That most likely is the culprit in my opinion.

Chopping holes in ice very bad, the noise can shock the fish too! When my power went out one year and the pump lines froze, I keep a garden hose handy and have a hook up in the bathroom to hot water, and throw the hose out the bathroom window to the pond which is not far, and run hot water thew hose to melt hole into ice.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Sissy, I am going to try that garlic next year, do you just chop some up and chuck it in the pond?