Another thing you may wish to consider: without a doubt, you don't have as
much water as you think you do. Knowing how much you "really" have is
important when it comes time to medicate or salt your pond. May I "assume"
you don't have any salt in it at the moment? When you're out buying the
other test kits, get a salt test also. The ones you have for your reef tank
won't work: the maximum a koi/goldfish pond should EVER be is 0.3, whereas
reef tanks start on the OTHER side of the decimal point! I kinda like
Aquarium Pharmaceutical tests: they're pretty easy (and accurate), but you
may have to deal with whatever you can find. Go to this site:
http://www.click2roark.com ; sign up (no cost/no spam!) and check out his
info. He has a calculator that will tell you exactly how much water you
really have. You test your water first (get the salt reading), add a KNOWN
(weighed) amount of salt, wait a day for the salt to dissolve, then test
again. Plug the figures into the calculator and it will tell you how many
gallons you really have. Be ready for a shock!

FYG, you can buy the plain ol' rock salt (in the blue bag) made by Morton
for water conditioners. It will dissolve slower than (NON-IODIZED!) table
salt, and is cheaper. When you add the salt, try to find a place to put it
where the fish can't get to it, like in your filter or something. They're
curious little buggers, and if they nose around in a pile of salt, they'll
get burned.

It's important to know how much water you really have.

Lee



"Carl Beyer" wrote in message
...

Not confused, just encourage. Thanks for the great advice. I have a
small (12gal) reef tank in the house, so some of this makes sense... I
will get on testing shortly.

Carl

--
--
http://www.cobaltbluefilms.com