Welcome to today's episode, everyone.
Today, we're gonna talk about activated carbon,
pond salt, and the use of dechlorinator.
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Today I want to kick off the show with a big shout out to one of our
loyal YouTube follower, subscriber Sissy Murphy.
She makes a comment on almost every one of our shows,
everyone of our episodes that we put out, and I'm a big fan of Sissy.
I've seen her pond, I've checked out her fish, and
I just wanna say thank you.
She put out a great question,
I wanna address that in today's episode.
She says, is activated carbon, does it really work, or
is it just a waste of money?
And I will tell you,
coming from an aquarium background, I'm a big fan of carbon.
And there's right ways to use carbon and
there's wrong ways to use carbon.
And if you use it the wrong way, yes you are wasting money.
Throw it in the trash.
Might as well just throw it away,
because if you don't install the carbon into your filtration system
correctly, it's not really going to work.
I'll give you the brief summary on it.
Activated carbon is a chemical filter, and
we wanna run our water through it.
As the water passes through the carbon, it absorbs impurities.
So if you just put that carbon bag, say in a big waterfall filter,
you throw a bag of it in there, if the water bypasses around
the carbon, the carbon's really not gonna do its job.
Here's a tip for the DIYers, I know I have a lot of DIYers watching
our stuff on YouTube, so here's your tip.
If you take this, imagine if you took a five gallon bucket, and
you filled it with.
Well, first you put some holes in the bottom of the bucket,
and then you would fill it with carbon.
And then, you would have water dripping into the top of the bucket.
And the water would go through this five gallon bucket, and
it would pass through the carbon, it would have to pass through, and
it would go out the bottom of the holes and back into your pond.
That's a very effective way to create basically a carbon reactor,
if you will.
And if you push your water through in that effect, you're
gonna have great results, and you're gonna get really clear, clear water.
I'll give you one more example.
Many, many years ago I had a client,
he had a lot of leaf debris in his pond.
He was having a party, and there were some tannins in the water.
So the water was a little bit brown, a little yellow.
And it just wasn't poppy, it didn't look really clear.
So we took apart his entire waterfall filters, and
we filled them to the top with carbon.
We put all these bags of carbon in there.
We cycled the water through there.
And within a couple of days, the water was incredibly,
incredibly clear.
He was a really happy camper.
I'm gonna give you kind of a rule of thumb for
treating your pond with carbon.
If you have a 1,000 gallon pond,
I would recommend somewhere around 10 pounds of carbon.
And if you run that water really effectively through the 10 pounds
of carbon, you're gonna like the results.
So thank you, Sissy, for the question.
And you know what, I can't I can't talk about Sissy without giving
a big shout-out to Judy Riggs, because she's another one of our
followers on YouTube, and she shares all of our videos on Google Plus.
We thank you for that very, very much.
Let's move on to the second question.
The second question comes from a pond builder.
He's actually a good friend of mine.
He's out in the LA basin.
Big shout-out to @socalponds.
And I see him on Instagram.
I think I originally met him on Twitter many, many years ago.
And he says should we be using salt in our ponds?
This is a tough one.
We're gonna get some mixed emotions on using pond salt in a pond.
Coming from the aquarium background again,
this is why I chose this question specifically for here.
Because when doing aquariums,
I always would put salt in all my freshwater aquariums, and
I remember a lot of people saying why you putting salt in there?
It's a freshwater tank.
But it's a trace mineral to have that salt in there, and
our tap water is stripped.
They stripped the salt from our tap water, and
it's really a natural trace element that they would find in the wild.
And it helps with osmosis and all of that stuff.
So having a little bit of salt in the pond is a real benefit, and
I highly recommend that everyone use salt in their pond.
Now, here's where it get tricky, and the controversy might come in.
Because many years ago, heavy doses of salt would be used
to control algae, and control parasites.
And, there's kind of a therapeutic level which would be down,
let's get this right.
Where the 0.1 percent is kind of a therapeutic level where we would
want to maintain that.
That's what they might achieve in the wild, out in nature,
to have 0.1% saline or salt in the pond.
So it's easily measured if you have the right tools.
So, Where it got tricky was, if you go to 0.3%,
your plants are starting to not do so well, but
it kills a couple of the parasites that can commonly be found with koi.
So, if you take the pond water to 0.6%, algae starts to die.
Pond plants are gone, and five of the seven parasites, sorry,
seven of the nine parasites that are gonna be going after your koi
start to fall off.
And you still have to address the other ones.
But there was a time period where everyone would just keep
their pond levels at, say, 0.6% or 0.5%.
Really high levels.
And it started to make some of the parasites resilient to the salt and
then we started to see other troubles.
So, when you hear some people say, don't put salt in the pond,
never put salt in there, we don't do it anymore unless we have to.
Well, when we are treating for parasites,
we have to go to a high level.
But if we want to put some trace elements in the pond, if you keep
it at 0.1% ,your fish are gonna be way happier than if there's zero.
And they're way happier than if it's at three to six.
So, I hope that answers your questions
on my point of view for salt.
So absolutely, I want you to put salt in the pond.
But just keep an eye on it.
Don't let it get too high.
Just keep it at real maintenance level salt levels.
There we go on that.
I'm gonna move on to kind of a tragedy that came
through our headquarters, just yesterday as a matter of fact.
Someone came in and
they, let me get to the question, I don't want to ramble too much yet.
The question is, I've never used decholorinator in the past, and
I lost my fish due to a chlorine poisoning.
Why should I have to add decholorinator, and
when do I know when to do it?
So it's a tricky question.
I have a lot of pond enthusiasts and
hobbyists that have been keeping ponds for a long time.
They never use dechlorinator.
They do water changes, they do back washes.
Unless they drain the pond completely,
then they might use some dechlor.
But listen to me, we're in California, we're in a drought, and
we're pulling water from here, we're pulling water from there.
Certain cities pull water from different territories, and
certain cities put more chlorine in water, and chloramines, than others.
So, let me tell you this.
The water companies in our cities are testing for
certain levels of bacteria in our drinking water,
the water that comes right out of your faucet.
And if they detect certain levels of bacteria,
let's say, undesirable bacteria,
then they're gonna shock our systems with chlorine and chloramine.
There's times when I can take a shower,
and I can smell the chlorine in the shower.
I know that the city just dosed it heavily at that point.
Now, you can get away with it for years without having a problem.
But one time, the city's pulling water from here,
they change their mind, they pull it from over here.
They detect some undesirable bacteria,
they shock the system with chlorine.
And you're doing a water change on your pond like you have for ten
years, and all of a sudden you're losing fish to chlorine poisoning.
You don't have any chlorine in the house, near the pond.
You're racing to the nearest pond specialty store to get some chlorine
to save your fishes life.
So use the dechlorinator in your pond
every time you do little water changes.
Do stuff, just put it in there, it's cheap insurance.
And then you won't have to worry about that stuff.
So that's gonna be, that's our episode for the day,
that's all the questions we're gonna answer in this episode.
And this brings me to the question of the day.
I come from an aquarium background, and I absolutely love ponds.
I wanna know how many pond people there are out there that have
aquariums or came from that area, or
you ended up in ponds without ever having an aquarium.
This is gonna be a fun question for me,
because that's where it all began for me.
Thanks, and have a great day.
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