A couple of Koi questions...

A couple of items for your advice please. Question 1-Feeding. I give my Koi (16 of them) their main meal mid morning and I usually soak the pellets for about half an hour before giving it to them. I do this because they are so hard, they still float on the water even after being soaked and I only give them sufficient that they can consume in 5 minutes. Later in the day I usually give them a treat of specialist food that they enjoy and over the summer they have grown remarkably well. My question is: am I doing the wrong thing by soaking their food first in a jug of pond water? Question 2 - Salt in water. At present I am adding salt at the rate of 50gms to 100Litres of water. Is this sufficient?, and how do you test for salt content in water? I have read many conflicting statements about the quantity of salt that should be added so your comments would be appreciated. At the moment I have some salt pool test strips and the reading on those is 9.7 ppm/(mg/L). I assume you need to make an allowance occasionally for evaporation because the water goes out of the pond but the salt stays in, which in fact would increase the salt content by a small margin. Look forward to seeing your response. Thank You, William Those are two good questions William. You don't need to soak your pellets in water before you feed your Koi, they have teeth that will crush anything that's hard. The Koi food manufacturer probably intended for the pellets to be put into the water when they're hard, by soaking them for half an hour, you may be breaking down the nutrients that are in the food. Your salt level should be fine. Salt in the water actually irritates Koi, but in the process it gives them a thicker slime coat. Salt also helps with their osmoregulatory system. Instead of using pool test strips, you should try switching to a Koi pond salt test kit. The salt level in the water due to evaporation is usually neglagable, just don't let your pond evaporate halfway. Share: Del.icio.us Digg Reddit