Using natural seawater for disease treatement.

[dizzyfish]

Would it be a bad idea to use filtered natural seawater to add salt to a koi pond near the ocean, if processed salt was very expensive to obtain? Let's assume NS has a PH ofs 8.2 and the water is clean and free of man made pollutants. I don't believe the transfer of parasites would be an issue, but the freshwater would kill microorganisms living in the seawater and that could cause some water quality issues. Here is a math problem to solve. If NS is 35ppt and you wanted to use it to raise 20,000 gallons of freshwater to 5ppt how much freshwater would you need to take out and replace?

So would it be risky to add the NS? How about if it was coming from saltwater wells and ground filtered? Steve Hopkins you out there?
Mitch

[UnkleTim]

whoa! when did kentucky get near an ocean? unk

[dizzyfish]

About the same time the great quake dropped Cali off into the Pacific.

[lildude]

Quote: Originally Posted by UnkleTim whoa! when did kentucky get near an ocean? unk

You didnt hear about the 15 magnitude earthquake?

[MikeM]

In theory it should work fine. I think a lot of folks use the large bags of water softener salt available at Lowes, Home Depot and other DIY stores (without additives!!). If you check the bag I think you'll find it is sea salt... sea water evaporated in the sun. It's so cheap, I think you'd have to be in dire straights to undertake the hassle of dealing with real sea water.

[bekko]

Yeah, I do that when I need to salt a pond. I also add some seawater to shipping bags instead of using solar salt. Just easier with our set-up. Don't worry too much about filtering the seawater because the seawater bugs will not be effective in freshwater.

-steveh opki

[koiczar]

Yeah, but what's the salinity content of sea water vs dosing to say, .03%????? I thought it was considerably higher and who wants to hastle with the conversion rates!!??

[dizzyfish]

Quote: Originally Posted by koiczar Yeah, but what's the salinity content of sea water vs dosing to say, .03%????? I thought it was considerably higher and who wants to hastle with the conversion rates!!??

Mike I had asked someone to do the math in the first post. Math is not my strong suit. Natural seawater is about 35ppt (parts per thousand) IIRC .03% is 3ppt. So will a math wiz please tell us how much feshwater you would need to take out and replace with natural seawater at 35ppt to raise a 20,000-gallon pond to .03%? If you had a decent refractometer it shouldn't be much of a problem to tweak it. Even adding water softener salt can get expensive if you have a really large pond, especially if you live on a tropical island.
Mitch

[JasPR]

Interesting question. Synthetic sea salt is of course made to buffer water ( 8.2 pH), add hardness ( loads of minerals) and at recommended doses bring specific gravity to 1021-1026. Really all we want and need is the specific gravity part. The rest is paid for and counter productive. A bag of solar salt ( 40- 50 pounds) is $5- $ 7 ?! The same weight in sea salt is $40-80?? True it goes further in a freshwater application but it brings along this minor baggage of too high a pH and too much hardness-again, no big deal in the amounts that will be used but -- why add it??

Natural sea water is usually right on the dot 1023-1024. So it is a question of how much you use to just get the salinty to the values we want and know as 'pounds per gallon' or mg/l. That could be tricky. It fine for the typical 'feel good splash for good luck' practices most beginners want to practice but hardly a controlled dose? Also , sea water is loaded with plankton and you are right, they will die from osmotic change - but then they are 'dead' in the water you are putting the fish in?? Have you ever smelled stale, warm standing sea water- yuck! In small amounts, diluted, it is just less offensive.

IMHO, JR

[PapaBear]

As already mentioned, Solar Salt is dirt cheap and most ponders dont' have ready access to sea water... but if you have 20,000 gallon fresh water pond just replace 2,000 gallons with sea water (35ppt) to get .035% net. If you wanted to really fine tune it to .03 use 1,700 gallons instead. Of course that assumes that your initial freshwater reading really is 0.00