Hey BV:
I sent you an email, (removing the frontal lobe piece), to confirm your
address, as I was ready to send salt posts to you, but never heard back from
you. Did you receive my email?
I know of a number of educated folks that do add salt to their ponds,
routinely each spring and let the levels drop with water changes. They are
dedicated (purist type) Koi folks, who do not have any plants in their
systems, just massive ($$$$) filters, etc. I respect them, but I personally
don't go that route, because I would like to save salt as a therapeutic
agent, and don't want to run the risk of selection forces....
The folks I refer to practice all the proper procedures with quarantine,
etc.
If they get disease, they do the appropriate water quality test, then fish
studies (scrapings, etc), and Rx based on what they find. Often they will
use the "bigger guns" to Rx, but they know how to dose them, and what to
watch for.
Until there is "scientific" proof, there will be 2 schools of thought on
routine salt addition, so you will see no conclusive, overwhelming evidence
on either side.
I treat my fish, like I do my patients.. I don't give anything, unless I
have an indication for it. (First do no harm is my tenet). That approach has
worked well for me over the last 23 plus years of practice, and 20 plus
years of ponding.
Happy ponding,
Greg
PS As I said in earlier posts, there are no studies that confirm either way
to be the "right" way.
The fact that folks can do either and be successful, IMHO, is because they
maintain good water quality, and avoid the conditions leading to disease.


--


"BenignVanilla" m wrote in
message ...
"Gregory Young" wrote in message
. ..
Thanks for the reply Tom.
I haven't seen others posting to this topic, so I assume most want to
keep
the heck out of this discussion, and quite frankly I can certainly
understand why, it's been beat to death!
I stopped replying, trying to go private email instead, but my offer to
do
so was not accepted.
After the second public posting about good diagnosticians being able to
just
look at a pond and figure out the problem (I let the first go), I felt I
had
better reply, for fear some might actually believe that was possible.
Have to run.. will catch you later,
Happy ponding,
Greg
snip

From a silent one...I have kept out of the discussion mostly because the
reading is better then the writing for me! I am somewhere on the fence
about this topic. I think you both raise some good points, but for me two
points are the most important. 1) I am against standardizing a medication
process. I don't take a pill unless I need it, and I don't think I want to
do that to my fish, so no salt just yet. 2) Unless I missed it, which is
possible, neither poster can provide a scientific study that says, "here
duh
facts". I think this topic is somewhat ambiguous as we do not have a clear
data set to work from, but I must admit, I lean towards Greg's school.
There
is just something 'fishy' about salting my fish. I dunno. My jury is still
out.

BV.