Adding Salt Question

[OrbWeaver]

HI, I have a 55 gallon guppy, tetra and molly tank. I read up on Mollies and saw they liked aquarium salt added to their water but I thought they could do fine without it. Well, after I added them to my tank, I was reading up on them on this forum and it seems that, for their health, I should be adding salt to the tank. My question is will this hurt my other fishes? I thought that tetra do not like salt, will it hurt them if I add it to the tank? I have a Britlenose Pleco on order. Can he be introduced to a tank with aquarium salt added?

I clean my tank often and use water conditioner before I add the water. I see that the active ingredient in it is sodium chloride. Will this help my Mollies?

Thank you for any help you can give. I really appreciate it.

My tanks water hardness is 150ppm. Ph is 6.8

 

[fishguy2727]

FRESHwater fish, including mollies, do not need salt. Mollies are one of the most debated species when it comes to adding salt because they actually do go in to brackish and marine water sin nature for food. HOWEVER, this is for short periods of time. The problem is that your other fish would not do this in nature. So not only would you be forcing the mollies into conditions they would not naturally be in (salt all the time), you are forcing those same conditions on all the other fish too. This would simply result in problems long term.

Provide high quality food and water and be done with it, no need for salt.

It is good to have salt on hand though since most freshwater fish respond well to salt treatments when stressed.

 

[OrbWeaver]

Oh thank you so much for your reply. I was just feeling awful that I was going to hurt these fish by not using salt or hurt the ones I had by adding salt. I am constantly cleaning my tank and offer a nice variety of foods...

Thank you again very much.

 

[creeker]

I agree salt is not needed. Many fish shops here use those rock salt trays in their tanks. I'm sure they feel they're cutting down on bacteria, but when I see a third of the tanks sick, it doesn't seem to work that way. I have never been a fan of salt in a freshwater tank, especially in tanks with tetras and plecos.

 

[OldMan47]

With a TDS of only 150 ppm, I would add something to increase that mineral content and drive your pH into the 7.0 plus range. I am one of those people who hates to tinker with tap water because it makes things harder to keep stable but mollies need more mineral content than your tap water. I have great success with mollies using nothing but tap water but my tap water runs 7.8 pH and 325 ppm of TDS. Some of the tetras and cories have a hard time in my water. If you decide to add salt, use the kind they make for a salt water tank. Aquarium salt is basically table salt without the added iodine, it is more like kosher salt. Saltwater tank salt contains lots of salts besides sodium chloride although sodium chloride remains the main salt in that stuff too.