Aquarium Salt for general use

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PilotGav

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Jun 3, 2012
Messages
76
Is it recommended to use aquarium salt in a freshwater community tank in general - or only for specific reasons such as illness, etc?

I'm reading conflicting opinions.

Hack
 
Depends on who you ask lol Personally I don't use it, I don't see the need and some freshwater fish (scaleless fish like Corys) might not be able to tolerate the salt, so to be safe I don't use it. If I needed to use it to treat something, I would use it then, but that's it.
 
I use very low amounts of salt in my 2 tanks but i personally wouldnt do it for a community. Both of my tanks are aggressive and the salt is used to keep them healthy. If u have some neons and other little guys i would say dont bother with salt. IMO for u its a waste of money.
 
Some say use it. Some say don't. From what I can tell it may or may not do good, so why bother. Just keep the water good with changes.
 
I used to use it in my community tank until I got my tetras. Basically how it was explained to me was that the salt adds electrolights in the water and helps add a slime coat. My fish have been just fine without as they were with. I have not seen a difference since I've stopped using it.
 
Back in my aquarium shop days I was under the impression that salt was a matter of total dissolved solids and the slime thing. I do have to say that I felt salt has it's place. I typically didn't add salt but for a few problem fish. I went to a tablespoon or two or rock salt per 10 gallons, along with a half dose of tetrid (I think that's what it was, it was back in the 80s) whenever I got a batch of new neons, worked very well. I also used to salt the heck out of my feeder goldfish. We had a supplier that sent feeder goldfish to all the shops in town, I had a different guy I got feeders from part of the time that said they really do well with salt, I went to doing a 80% WC on my 40 gallon feeder tank with cold water and adding a bit over a 1/4 to 1/3 cup of salt right before adding the feeders, went from heavy losses to virtually none. There was a significant amount of time I was the only store in town with healthy feeders, even though we all usually got them from the same supplier. I typically brought in 2000-3000 feeders at a time. It was a bare 40 breeder tank with the biggest marineland bio-wheel HOB available at the time.

I have zero problems with a bit of salt in most tanks, with allowances for certain fish or plants. Guess I'm old school. Don't know if I'd bother adding salt on a regular basis if I was having no problems with my fish.

I'll mention, I haven't had an aquarium in years, just getting back into it (hopefully, long story, too busy scuba diving to bother with an aquarium these days, hope to change that) so a lot of my training/upbringing is based on 60s/70s/80s/90s info, thought have changed the last 15 years or so on some things.
 
I've read that long term use of salt will shut down the fish's kidneys and will kill them. Don't know if that is true but no need to chance it. Just keep the water changes going and quarantine new fish and all should be good.
 
I'm reading conflicting opinions.

This is possibly the most widely debated topic with fishkeepers.

I do not use as a "general tonic" due to the species I keep. I have inverts and scaleless species. I probably still would not use it even if my species all accepted it well.
 
Heres the whole thing in a nutshell. Some say salt helps (i use it in one of my tanks), some say it doesnt change a thing. If u are worried about it affecting ur fish, then dont bother. I personally dont find it a necessity in my aquarium, i just use it as a luxury. It really will not change much so i would ignore it for now and buy some if u find u need it ( i dont see why u would)
 
If you get three fishkeepers together and ask them about the regular use of aquarium salt, I think you'll get no less than six opinions. ;-)

While there are a number of pros and cons, I don't personally use it in my goldfish tank on a regular basis. While there's more than one argument/reason on each side of the salt / no salt decision, the one that clinched it for me was:

If you use salt on a regular basis, and get an outbreak of an illness for which salt can be a treatment, that outbreak will most certainly be salt resistant -- taking away one of the weapons in the arsenal against said illness.

Of course, those that advocate salt might argue that salt will help prevent said illness in the first place.
 
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