What are the water parameters of the pond/tub including temperature? When you move him/her to the tub did you use the water from the pond? Try to use at least some of the water he/she was in. All new water can/will shock him/her.

Thanks Nance & Deb for your assistance. I went out to check the pond earlier and saw Gil my bluegill laying on it's side. I netted it out of the pond and put it in the isolation tank with the sea salt. I pulled my pump out of the bottom of the pond (where I store it for the winter) and pumped pond water into my spare 100 gal stock tank and added malachite green. I took the sick koi and Gil out of the salt bath and put them in the medicated stock tank. The koi seems to be doing better but still has a lot of fungus on it's tail. The bluegill is swimming around now instead of laying on it's side. My pond is 3,000 gals. I called Petsmart and they have Melafix for ponds. I am going to treat the entire pond before I start everything up. Hopefully this will prevent anymore sick fish. Jenny

I am just having a look at this old thread and will comment only on the zeolite. The natural zeolite is of the clinoptilolite mineral referred to here I would suspect. It is formed from volcanic ash that falls into a saline lake. It has an order of preference for cations. At the bottom is sodium then ammonia then things like potassium, magnesium, calcium and at the end the high preference are heavy metals such as lead, cadmium etc. What this means is that clinoptilolite will more likely hold and not exchange out those higher in its order of preference. So it will not exchange lead for sodium or ammonia for sodium. We mine and process clinoptilolite natural zeolite and sell large quantities into the swimming pool market to replace the filter media in sand or diatomaceous earth filters. In salt and chlorinated swimming pools it works the same. For aquariums the clinoptilolite, natural zeolite is very suitable but I would still blend in activated carbon. The zeolite is good for molecules and individual atoms of up to 120 in molecular weight and then activated carbon is better for anything larger. Organic molecules you also wish to remove may be quite large in size. Zeolite will be great on removing ammonia and still allow table salt to be used. As stated above, it is true a brine of very concentrated table salt will exchange out other cations such as ammonia as it will simply overwhelm them. You could also just buy more zeolite! Natural zeolites vary in hardness and any preloading with cations. Zeolite from young deposits of only a few million years of age will be soft and chalky and likely still be loaded with cations for example of potassium and calcium. Older deposits hundreds of millions years in age are harder and less loaded with cations. The latter is more suited to aquariums. If in doubt when you buy some, sit the zeolite in a bucket of water of a heavy mixture of table salt for a few hours to a day before loading your filter (with some activated charcoal).

OK, having said not to be paranoid about bacteria, I have to add a caution. I know a little bit about apple trees, having lived with one outside my house for a few years (they were Cortlands) and also at one time in my life I was in charge of a fall festival at a nature center and we had a cider press and made cider. Plus I grew up in Michigan's apple country. I routinely made applesauce out of organic apple "drops" and it was no easy task because the apples were just full of brown spots and discolorations inside and out. Now these were old apple trees that got no husbandry whatsoever. But yes, good sauce in the end. But I actually washed, peeled, cored and cut them up individually, so I had a lot of control over the apple bits that got into the sauce. But as I mentioned, I'm more of a "boutique" canner than a "git 'er done" canner. I also got to go to an orchard that donated apples for our cider pressing demo, and we were allowed to pick up the drops. We did not give out many samples of the cider though, we bought cider for samples. There is a problem with dropped apples, and that is due to contact with the ground there is a risk that they will be contaminated with E. coli. (Short for Escherichia coli, the species name). Not necessarily the deadly super-bug strain of E. coli found in meat, but the kind that can make you real sick like from contaminated water. There have been cases of people getting sick from unpasteurized apple cider, there was a case in my hometown from a local orchard. The problem with the drops is that on the ground they can come into contact with animal feces, and if you have deer and raccoons and other animals foraging on those apples, you can bet that is possible. Now here's the part where others may want to chime in, because I know that acid and sugar in applesauce takes care of botulism, but I don't know about E. coli. I know that boiling for a certain time will kill the bacteria, I just don't know how the thickness variable plays out in applesauce as far as the boiling, because thickness will affect heat penetration. Since there are no specific cautions that I have found on these Cooperative Extension Web sites about applesauce and dropped apples, I would hazard a guess it is OK. It's not like you get some kind of guarantee that the apples you buy commercially have never touched the ground! I just know drops are not preferred for selling commercially, either as raw apples or for making cider. However, the longer the apples sit on the ground the more likely they are to get some kind of contamination. Maybe a good boiling will take care of that. I would call my Cooperative Extension Agency just to make sure, or maybe someone else can chime in here who has used drops. I peel and cut my apples because I can't afford organic ones and I know too much about what is on the peels to want it coming in contact much with my applesauce. Like I said, the method you are planning on using is fine, I just like chunkier, more "boutique" style applesauce since I give it away as gifts. I have not heard of any cases of E. coli contamination in applesauce, so maybe I am just being overly fussy. I would use them myself, but just not with the method you suggest. But maybe others here have done so with no problems. Whatever the risk I think it is low, and it may be non-existent, so I would like to hear what others have to say.