Salt Salt Salt

The pond is improving day by day. Most of the small koi are no longer clamping their fins. One small Kohaku looks a little red from irritation still. Local experts agree I should salt the pond to .6% over three days. I got it up to .32% last night and now I need to buy more salt. The high salt level has a medicinal effect on the fish and pond by killing most everything that is bad for the fish. I'm using Solar Salt from Home Depot. It's 99.5% pure and is used in water softening systems. I've been dissolving it in water first and dumping it slowly into the pond.

I also added more biological filtration and started an initial KoiZyme treatment.

So here is what I've done in summery:

1. Conducted an autopsy on my dead fish - discovered body flukes under the microscope
2. Separated the upper pond from the lower one (easier to deal with one pond at a time)
3. Treated the lower pond (2000 gallons) with 20g of Praziquantel
4. Set up a 25 gallon quarantine tub in case I have to treat individual fish with stronger medication
5. Increasing salt level to 0.6% measuring with a salt meter over 3 days
6. Begin pond treatment with KoiZyme

The upper pond I will likely have to drain, clean, and treat it and the plants with Potassium Permanganate. I really need to redo the entire upper pond. Trying to decide if I want to do this now or wait until spring. Minimally I should drain and clean it out and treat with Prazi so as not to even begin to contaminate the lower pond even by accident.