My parents live in Rowallan Park, P.E. and they have severe water restrictions. They are allocated 500L of water a day at the momment for a family of 5. Their water will be cut off later tonight as the municipality is starting to "load shed" suburbs.

They are unable to top up their koi pond and the water in the koi pond is very low as the liner developed a leak last week. Its a small koi pond - 2500L and it has 11 koi in it (i think) of 30+- cm.

My parents have a 50 000l swimming pool, i advised them that they might have to put the koi in the swimming pool as a last resort. Now how do they go about preparing the swimming pool? Or is this not going to work. They use Blue52 in their pool- not HTH. I think Blue52 is a Copper-Sulfate product simular to most algaecides that people use in koi ponds to kill algea but im not 100% sure.

The swimming pool is also already below its suction line so the pump cant run. So my dad could put some airstones in the pool from the pond.

Remember - water changes is not an option.

What would you guys suggest? Would the water be ok for koi?

Hi Wayne,

Your first step would be to check with the manufacturers of the Blue52 you folks have been using. Find out exactly what is in this product. I will look around for you as well. If possible speak to a chemist at the manufacturers. You need to find out what is in the product AND how long the chemicals remain in the water.

For example Chlorine only remains in a pool for a certain number of hours or day then it dissipates. You can then palce koi in a swimming pool a number of days after stopping treatment with chlorine.

Once you have found out about the chemicals and if they can dissipate out of the water or perhaps they have a certain life find out if something like Sodium Thiosulphate can bind the remaining chemicals. (I am trying to suggest things that we as koi keepers are familiar with and are freely available).

Also find out if the algae that will grow in the swimming pool will remove the chemicals. Has the swimming pool turned green yet?

If the chemicals cannot be removed you have a problem. If they can be removed or they are at such a low level that fish can survive then I would add a koi from the collection to the pool and see what happens.

Air stones would be very important. Place the air stones in the pool at different points. Place then a few centemeters above the floor so the water is sucked up towards the surface. If necessary get a better air pump to do this job.

Purchase an ammonia test kit - thats all you need. And perhaps a pH test kit to see the effect the chemicals have had on the pH of the water.

You will find the water going very green and lots of instects growing in the pool. Both great for the koi. You may find better growth out of the fish in these conditions!

Keep feeding to a minimum to keep ammonia levels down. Also there will be live food develping so once a day feeding at the most. After a time with the small fish and a small number of fish you may find the ammonia levels creaping up. But looking at the numbers you have a large volume of water to a small number of fish. This is a big plus and a bit like the stocking densities of a Japanes growing on pond.

I suggest you contact the Koi Society and buy some Chlor Am X from them. This has been proven at the koi shows and binds the ammonia instantly in the water at koi shows. They aslo use this product in the water at koi Shows in America. I was in charge of the water at the koi show at Gardenex last year and saw how effect this chemical was. It is also quite safe for the fish.

You can use the Chlor Am X every now and again when the ammonia builds up to chemically remove it from the poll water.

If this turns out to be a long term problem I suggest purchasing a pond vaccum. You can get mechanical ones that you use to suck the sludge off the floor. The ones that look like giant syringes. There is another suction that works very well off a hose pipe and is very cheap. But then again water is a problem.

The success of the this whole project depends on the levels of the chemicals presently in the swimming pool and whether they can be eliminated.

Hope this helps.
Chris

Thanks Chris, i will go and find out all these things.

The pond has not had any new chemicals in 2 weeks but its not green yet.

Well, i phoned the blu52 helpline. I must add they where not very helpfull regarding this topic which they found very odd and i guess one can understand their response. The response i got was... "Sir if your parents want to kill all their fish they must put them in the pool, blu52 is a chemical sir, fish cant life in chemicals"

They are not willing to say how long the product stays in the water, cause they dont want to be responsbile for the loss of this fish. They suggest that to get rid of the checmical my parents would have to drain the whole pool and put new water in.

To be honest i dont think the telephone staff has the kowledge to help me.

I was also not able to get chemist tel number as they did not want to give it to me.

The main ingrdients according to the packaging are:
300g Copper-Sulphate
500g Zink-Sulphate

I live no more than 5km from your parents, in Kabega Park.

They can source borehole water if needed as there's quite a few people advertising it.

As for the suction.... Try the below setup:



I did this with a portapool a while back and it works briliantly.

Hmm a thought what about adding those anti clorinators, pond conditioners. Know that tetra 9Builderwarehouse has) makes one.

Then get a poor old fish to test...........

Hi Adi, the blue52 product does not contain any clorine so the anti chlorine products wont work. Its actually copper that they add to the water and that kills all the algea, leaving blue water.

Now copper is poisonous to kois. The question is how long till the copper sulphate works itself out or what can be added to neutrulise it.

Hi Wayne

Not really a solution but maybe a step in the right direction would be to take a water sample in for analysis much the same as they do for borehole water so you can last see what quantities of the various chemicals are in there before looking at trying to neutralize them.

Just putting it out there not sure if it will help.

Cheers
Lee

I received this from KoiCare a few days ago.

Koi Care wrote:

"A common misconception about Copper is that it can be removed from the water with activated charcoal. It can only be removed by either doing water changes, or by using E.D.T.A. (Ethylene Diamine Tetra Acidic Acid) to chelate it out of the water. Remember folks, there is no such thing as a "Chelated Copper Solution", as "Chelated" means "Inactivated". The proper terminology would be "Sequestered Copper Solution"."

Koi carp begin show signs of copper-effect at @ 0.03 ppm and may be killed under various circumstances

It is also affected by pH.

How do they remove heavy metals from water? Is copper not part of heavy metal?

My parents no longer have a problem.

My parents have since my last post bought a 1400L portapool and now the koi are living in it while they enlarge and fix the existing koi pond. They have pumped the remaining water from the koi pond into the portapool. They have a net over it but one of their kois have managed to jump out during the first night...so now there are only 10 left.