Simply Koi and More Koi

OK,

A quick scenario - you are called upon to help a hobbyist. Parasites are found and the pond needs treating with the relevant chemical.

BUT.....

the person does not know the gallonge for certain (ie:- you get the response "its about 1500 gallons) and yet when you look at it the picture just doesn't fit. To cloud the issue slightly it is a informal pond with waterfall etc and is not flat bottomed.

How do you get the correct gallonage to treat?

The truth about treatments are ... none of the dosages given need to be 100% accurate to the last pint, so as long as I could make a real good educated guess at the gallonage, I'd work out my treatment to be within the upper and lower limits. On a side note, I never trust what people tell me about their pond gallonage, I generally measure and calculate it myself, you'd be surprised how many ponds are considerably smaller than their owners think.

What treatment are you considering ...

Depends on the parasite becuase if it's white spot and I don't know the gallonage and it will be very hard to calculate then I would be very tempted to dose it with salt and measure that using a hydrometer so I could just add salt until I got the right dosage level! Maybe not the most accurate way but it has worked for me in the past.

Otherwise, as Boogatee said, I'd do my best calculation and dose as best as possible. Other option would be to dose PP and stand by with the dechlorinator if it's still purple after 4 hours.

Not that hard to get a reasonable estimate of a typically sized pond in about 10 minutes of basic measurements and calculations. So pretty sure you could get within +/- 20% within this time.

Most treatments have massive thresholds.

So, providing the pH is reasonable, then wouldn't be too fused.... but I'd want my disclaimer form filled in!

Tom

well thats got me thinking...I will be putting a tape measure in my medicine box for all those pond visits, for some reason I just never thought of it till now