FishNewbee
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
I'm pretty new to this hobby and was told from a lfs employee to always add conditioning salt to any water I put in my tank. I am still doing this with every water change, once a week, along with dechlorinator. Since I've had no cycling issues and no fish loss, I'm afraid to change what I'm doing. I have barbs, 1 raphael cat, 4 african cichlids, a rainbow shark and 2 mystery snails. I am wondering if this is really necessary, and possibly, if it may be damaging to the snails, cichlids or the catfish. As I've set up my tank, I have purchased all of my fish from this same store and they've never said anything about water specifics for different types of fish such as the cichlids. They all seem to be thriving but I'm curious about the necessity of the salt. I don't have any nitrites or ammonia in the tank, and nitrates are always around 5ppm. It is soft water, also. Is this because of the addition of the salt? Also, I've been reading more about argonite substrates, etc. Is this absolutely necessary? I have regular aquarium gravel in the tank now. Thanks for any replies.