Salt in Freshwater ??
- Thread starter aquafun
- Start date
The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Devilishturtles
Aquarium Advice Addict
With the exception of Ich (and even that is debatable), aquarium salt is kinda pointless in freshwater aquariums, in my opinion. For the most part it wouldn't hurt, but not really needed.
rich311k
Aquarium Advice Addict
Some people swear by it and it gets hotly debated on forums like this,. I like DT do not use it at all.
Phoenixphire55
Aquarium Advice Freak
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2007
- Messages
- 448
Salt might be a good thing to try for a sick fish. It is often a much safer option than medications or water treatments. That being said, salt only is effective on certain illnesses, usually external problems. Ich for example can be cured by salt. Its very important that the fish you use it on will tolerate salt. Scaleless fish like plecos are not tolerant to salt from what I know. Goldfish on the other hand are. I had a Ich breakout in my tank a few months ago and I added the approriate amount of salt and the outbreak was gone in a few days. No costly medication needed and no added chemicals to stress the fish. Some people will use salt at all times in their freshwater tanks to prevent illness, but that probably isn't necessary.
One option: If you want to treat a fish with Ich or some other problem that might be cured with salt, you can always give the fish a salt bath. This is when you take your fish out of its tank and put it in a container of water with a fairly high amount of salt in it, only for about 15-20 minutes. Baths can be stressful for the fish but at least you can treat just the one fish instead of dosing the entire tank. You can do the same with other medications, just make sure to ask someone (not me, haha) how to do it.
One option: If you want to treat a fish with Ich or some other problem that might be cured with salt, you can always give the fish a salt bath. This is when you take your fish out of its tank and put it in a container of water with a fairly high amount of salt in it, only for about 15-20 minutes. Baths can be stressful for the fish but at least you can treat just the one fish instead of dosing the entire tank. You can do the same with other medications, just make sure to ask someone (not me, haha) how to do it.
Sum22
Aquarium Advice Freak
I added aquarium salt to my last tank for years. I always put in 1tbp per 10g of water and then would adjust the amount with my weekly 25% water change. It didn't have any negative effects. I never had ich and I only had an outbreak of Neon tetra disease. I never had signs of any other disease. However, it was messy, leaving a film on my filter and any place the water splashed.
After I moved, I set up my tanks and a new tank. I'm not adding salt. I've had ich in the 10g and I've got a case of columnaris in my harlequin rasboras in the 29g.
Does salt prevent disease. Honestly, it is too early to tell. I did cycle the 10g with a betta in the tank and frequent water changes which probably led to the ich outbreak. I also added my fish to my 29g after 3 days of false 0ppm tests. Turns out the level was much higher at about 1-2ppm. So the columnaris might be due to the high nitrite levels the fish were exposed to, for two weeks.
Either way, without salt I'm off to a worse start than when I first set up my 10g in 2003 before breaking it down and giving my fish away to move. I'll keep monitoring the situation and I might actually post my findings sometime later on.
After I moved, I set up my tanks and a new tank. I'm not adding salt. I've had ich in the 10g and I've got a case of columnaris in my harlequin rasboras in the 29g.
Does salt prevent disease. Honestly, it is too early to tell. I did cycle the 10g with a betta in the tank and frequent water changes which probably led to the ich outbreak. I also added my fish to my 29g after 3 days of false 0ppm tests. Turns out the level was much higher at about 1-2ppm. So the columnaris might be due to the high nitrite levels the fish were exposed to, for two weeks.
Either way, without salt I'm off to a worse start than when I first set up my 10g in 2003 before breaking it down and giving my fish away to move. I'll keep monitoring the situation and I might actually post my findings sometime later on.
Similar threads
