# farm pond management



## macfish (Apr 7, 2004)

A buddy has a 1 acre farm pond and has what i call moss on the surface, and he was told to add salt blocks to the pond. my question is what effect will the salt blocks have on the pond?


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## 68bucks (Aug 17, 2013)

macfish said:


> A buddy has a 1 acre farm pond and has what i call moss on the surface, and he was told to add salt blocks to the pond. my question is what effect will the salt blocks have on the pond?


If you add much salt to the water I guess it will kill about everything in it. I never heard of that advice for weeds before. There are lots of spray herbicides for that problem that won't kill the fish if there are any. Most of them are copper based.


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## Georgio_P (Jun 4, 2010)

With some NaCl in the water like 2% is ok , much more than that, amphibians will leave, snails die around 15% salinity. Most fish around here can tolerate 10%-15%. If you make the water brackish, around 30%, small fish will start to die as will most algae, in a short time. Salt blocks, like Cow Licks? would have to be measured against the volume of water to determine the optimal concentration to kill the algae, but there are better methods out there. You will also most likely kill off a fair amount of your beneficial bacterial and invertebrates once you start going over 20% salinity. I put 80lbs of softener salt into 2000 gallons to reach 3.5% salinity, and that seems to be the right mix for most all animals in the pond. Algae is better controlled with other chemicals specific for algae.


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