Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Controlling unwanted plants Homemade weed killer. Pond safe??

I saw the road salt program go South first hand. First all of the trees within 50 feet of the road started dying. Then stream in the lower elevation getting the higher elevation runoff started having major trout die off. Plants near the stream and river started dying. Biologist came in and said, road salt is the culprit. They switched over to road sand and never looked back.

I have also seen a pond die a horrible death from salt, never to recover. Guy had a lot of concrete work done around his home, and all of his walkways were salt rock finish. He had a real nice pond. Had, until all of the rain and runoff from his concrete hit the pond. It had one of the worst crashes I have witnessed. Just a slow and steady death. Plants started yellowing, fish started getting sick, dissolved O2 was also going away. Was called in too late after no one could figure it out. He lost everything, and that pond was filled in and a full length basketball court was put on top of the fill in, because nothing could live in the water. At first I thought it was muriatic acid runoff, or some type of concrete poisoning. But when I saw the type of concrete finish I had an idea many sacks of rock salt. Had water tested, just over 4 ppm salt. PH was also a disaster. Pond had at least 10 LMB over 5 and 3 over 10 plus 100 smaller ones. It was a sickening sight I will never forget. We even emergency aerated to no avail. The lack of dissolved O2 was merely a symptom, not the root cause. Guy was teary eyed at the very end, was planned to be his grandkids fishing hole. He built the court for them instead. You never forget jobs like that, never.