Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Water softeners

I have 2 1/2 ac pond all of my down spouts run in the pond. The pond is about 150 ft from house, so when the softener back washes and that is twice a week.I think about 15gals a flush. I've heard this is not enough brine water to affect the pond. most of the water goes into the ground. But over time some will work its way down there. this has been going on for about 2 months due to fact I had to stop it from going into the septic. In using block salt no chemicals. What do you think

Thanks Dave

I suspect a backwash cycle on your softener may be a couple of hundred gallons not 15. At least mine takes about an hour or so to flush but it isn't pumping water the whole time. The good news is the more water it flushes the more you dilute your salt. A certain salt content is fine and you are going into a huge volume of water (2.5 acres) I can't imagine it will be an issue.

I agree with CC to a point. If salt is making it's way to the pond, and the pond does not occasionally have flow through, over time it could be a problem. You might want to occasionally (once a year at low pool) check the salinity level of the pond water. If nothing else, checking will give you peace of mind.

It's not the amount of water, it's the amount of salt. But, like what was said above, I doubt you will ever see a reading on a salinity test. But, for peace of mind, take a reading now for a baseline.

Why did you take it out of your septic system?

EDIT: can you put in a french drain?

We had a new system put in and the septic people said it was not recommend to run it in system, said it was bad for the good bacteria.

My son has a large salt water fish tank can you use the same test on pond water?

I figured a certain amount of salt would be good for the water???

They put salt in the water when fish are hauled. How much salt would have to be added to a pond before it became problematic?

I did some searches to see if I could find anything out about additional salt added to ponds. Lots of stuff comes up about the very small Koi ponds but not much about the size ponds we mostly talk about here on PBF.

One hit was about commercial catfish farms in Arkansas. It is not specific to sport ponds and likely does not apply directly, but I did find it interesting that they do recomend adding up to ton of salt per acre.

salt in commercial catfish ponds

Your all probably right. I have bigger fish to fry when it comes to this pond. its 45yrs old or so and has been neglected trees all over dam a small wet spot back side of dam, but on a good note good fishing nice to look at, but you got to start some where so plenty to do.

Thanks

some salt will do the fish good, it would take dump truck loads of salt to even raise the salt level above 5ppt in a pond that size. I don't think it would ever be an issue. IMHO, if any thing it might help out a little.

This is mildly interesting about salt in ponds. Check out the last paragraph.

last paragraph is about salt usage in ponds

Here is a YouTube video about using salt in a pond. BE ADVISED I AM PRETTY SURE THE GUY IS TALKING ABOUT A SMALL KOI POND. But it is interesting in that it does mention concentration levels and it does talk about water softener salt which this thread is about.

water softener salt as pond salt

I did watch another video that said not to use water softener salt because of impurities but his reasoning was it might have other minerals (Koi pond with small water volume again - I suspect our ponds have plenty of other minerals from the soil) plus he was pushing sales of a commercial pond salt.

An old PBF thread on the subject of salt.....

salt to stop pond leaks

Our softener has been going into our new bed from day one. Our new softener only uses 12 bags of salt per year.

To start the tank off for bacteria I put in a full minnow trap of minnows and three slices of baloney. The tanks is working great.

Cheers Don.