when to add salt to a cycling tank

[tommyroo]

Hello everyone,

I am on like day 5 of cycling a new 55 gallon. This tank will be the new home for my green spotted puffers so I must make it brackish.

I had planned on adding salt to the tank after it had cycled that way I can try a acclimate some new fish from the LFS to my brackish conditions. The store sells brackish fish but keeps them in fresh water for some reason.

If I add raise the salinity by say .001 a week after the cycling will I kill off my bacteria because of the changing water conditions and thereby cause the tank to re-cycle or will I be safe?

 

[deli_conker]

I am on like day 5 of cycling a new 55 gallon.

What method are you using to cycle your tank?

If I add raise the salinity by say .001 a week after the cycling will I kill off my bacteria because of the changing water conditions and thereby cause the tank to re-cycle or will I be safe?

I don't think that the salt will have any negative effect on the bacteria., it's the same bacteria that inhabit sw aquariums...

 

[tommyroo]

I threw a dozen rosey barbs. Yes, I am evil but I never knew about fishless cycling before I started looking stuff up online. Plus, they were just Oscar food that my buddy Sean gave me.

The reason I was worried about adding the salt is there is a big difference between fresh (1.00) and the level my puffers are in now (1.006).

 

[Menagerie]

Personally, I would not worry about the salt causing harm to the tank.

 

[deli_conker]

I don't know if the salt will hurt the barbs or not. Are you planning on keeping them after you get your puffers in there?

You could just add some bio-spira and be done with it...

 

[tommyroo]

Well to tell you the truth, Im not worried about the salt hurting the barbs. They are going back into the Oscar tank after the cycle.

I was worried about developing all my bacteria the adding salt and killing them off.

 

[jsoong]

I don't know about going all the way to 1.006. But when I was treating ich with salt, I raised the salt to 1.003 0r 1.004 over 3 days with no effect on any of my levels. (Tank was about 4 weeks after cycling completed).

 

[flipz]

don't worry about adding salt, do it whenever. i have had a brackish tank for a year now with anywhere from 1.005 to 1.015. I've never had any problems with the levels being messed up by moving around between the two. and i added it as soon as i started cycling the tank, the same day i set up the tank. don't know if you are supposed to or not but i had no problems.

oh and i just added a spotted green puffer last week at 1.010, and recently moved back to 1.015 with no problems, and he is happy as can be (aside from an unrelated eye problem. heh) Very active tho

 

[tommyroo]

Cool, thanks for the advise!