Aquarium Salt

[Murray]

can i put it in wtih my kribs?

 

[three-fingers]

You can put aquarium salt in with anything really, It's just pure Sodium Chloride, doesn't do much.
A waste of time and money dosing it unless you are giving your fish a salt bath to treat parasites or something IMO.
http/badmanstropicalfish.com/articles/article22.html

 

[ryguy]

You can put aquarium salt in with anything really, It's just pure Sodium Chloride, doesn't do much.
A waste of time and money dosing it unless you are giving your fish a salt bath to treat parasites or something IMO.
http/badmanstropicalfish.com/articles/article22.html

i use with my cichlids and it is also known to help fight off disease so its good to always have a little in a tank with the exception of not needing it for a betta.

 

[three-fingers]

IMO/E that's a lie they tell you so you'll buy it .
Why would salt help fight of disease?
And why wouldn't you need it for a betta?

 

[Murray]

im treating for diesease and im gonna throw some in there eh, how often can u put it in?

 

[iairj84]

Salt doesn't evaporate with the water, so you only need to add it once with the reccomended dosing on the box. I believe on mine it's 1 tablespoon for every 10 gallons and 2 for every 10 if it's helping to fight disease, I wouldn't do that much though if other fish are in the tank. It shouldn't hurt them but it's probably not the best either.... And be VERY careful using salt when scaleless fish are present, I.E. Cat's, Cories, and loaches.

 

[mcdanielnc89]

^ you're right for the amount or u can do 1/2 teaspoon for every gallon.. lol..

and also the salt will reduce the stress..

 

[mark7616]

You can not use salt for all fish fish with out scales can not tolerate salt.

 

[three-fingers]

im treating for diesease and im gonna throw some in there eh, how often can u put it in?

The recommended doses will have little if any affect on anything in the tank, let alone disease. I hope your using some other kind of medication too?
Why would salt kill the disease, but not the freshwater fish?

Salt doesn't evaporate with the water, so you only need to add it once with the recommended dosing on the box. I believe on mine it's 1 tablespoon for every 10 gallons and 2 for every 10 if it's helping to fight disease, I wouldn't do that much though if other fish are in the tank. It shouldn't hurt them but it's probably not the best either.... And be VERY careful using salt when scaleless fish are present, I.E. Cat's, Cories, and loaches.

Why would having no scales effect the salt tolerance? There's thousands of scaleless brackish/marine species of fish. Some of the brackish ones frequently travel between freshwater and full marine water.

^ you're right for the amount or u can do 1/2 teaspoon for every gallon.. lol..

and also the salt will reduce the stress..

Salt will not reduce the stress...It doesn't matter that you use it in all the tanks at petsmart, that does not make it useful.
The salt in the recommended doses will have no real effect on anything in the tank, but if your saying these doses are large enough to eradicate disease and potentially harm scale less fish, then HOW is that going to make the other freshwater fish less stressed?

You can not use salt for all fish fish with out scales can not tolerate salt.

The only time salt in such small doses could harm most fish is if you add it straight to the aquarium without mixing it in water first.
The only fish that you should be worried about having a bad tolerance to 'aquarium salt' are corydoras, but even then I've used it with corydoras in the past (multiple times) and the salt did not kill them even when I 'overdosed'.
I have yet to meet anyone who has had problems with corydoras and 'aquarium salt'.

 

[iairj84]

Whether or not you've used it before with cories and they've been fine doesn't make it safe for them. Search around anywhere on the net, and you'll see that no one reccomends using salt with scaleless fish and even some reccomend not using it with tetras either. Yes you can probably get away with it and be fine, but that doesn't make it great for the fish. I would just be careful is all I'm saying. Freshwater fish are so far off of saltwater fish making a comparison there is pretty crazy. A fish that has spent it's whole existence in saltwater is obviously going to be fine there regardless if it has scales or not.

 

[Murray]

The recommended doses will have little if any affect on anything in the tank, let alone disease. I hope your using some other kind of medication too?

I am treating for columnaris/mouth fungus with mardel maracyn plus and maracyn 2

 

[iairj84]

I've had good luck using the salt with maracyn one and two for columnaris. This has been with livebearers primarily but should work the same. Columnaris is a nasty disease! Good luck with it, and I would ask a few more questions in the emergency forum, those guys are pretty knowledgable

 

[three-fingers]

Whether or not you've used it before with cories and they've been fine doesn't make it safe for them. Search around anywhere on the net, and you'll see that no one reccomends using salt with scaleless fish and even some reccomend not using it with tetras either. Yes you can probably get away with it and be fine, but that doesn't make it great for the fish.

While the internet is a wealth of fishkeeping knowledge, it is also full of myths. Aquarium salt is not recommended by many websites for these fish because they come from soft acidic water (the exact opposite of sea water), thousands and thousands of people use aquarium salt in their aquarium, and when fish die of an unknown cause the salt is often to blame. It would seem to make sense, I presume the train of thought was something like "My corydoras just died, I added aquarium salt yesterday, corydoras come from soft acidic water, sea water is salty, sea water is hard and alkaline...aquarium salt killed my corydoras!" .

However, unlike marine salt sold for the use in marine aquariums, aquarium salt is just Sodium Chloride - which only makes up for around 70% of sea water. Sodium Chloride alone has very little effect the pH (just as the API claims), it's pH in an aqueous solution is 6.7 - 7.3(*) and in the one or two tablespoons per gallon dosages will have no effect on the aquariums pH.
It wont have any effect on the hardness(GH or KH) either, since the GH is mainly a measurement of calcium and magnesium ions in the water, and KH is the measurement of carbonate and bicarbonate ions.
I never claimed it was "great for the fish", on the contrary, I believe it to have very little effect on them whatsoever .

I would just be careful is all I'm saying. Freshwater fish are so far off of saltwater fish making a comparison there is pretty crazy.

Not really the case here, since there are close relatives of corydoras that thrive in brackish water and there are lot's of 'freshwater' fish that live in brackish water. Sure there are plenty of families of freshwater fish with no relatives in brackish or marine water, and vice versa. For those, a comparison is pretty crazy, but that is not the case here. Besides, the only comparison I made is the scales, which isn't a crazy comparison regardless of how different the fish are . There are scaleless fish that travel between fresh and full marine water, just as there are fish with scales that have a very low tolerance of higher salinities than they are used to.

A fish that has spent it's whole existence in saltwater is obviously going to be fine there regardless if it has scales or not.

And a fish that has spent it's whole existence in freshwater is generally not going to be fine with salt in the water - regardless if it has scales or not. It has nothing to do with the fish having scales, it is just a myth.

The main thing that urks me is that how people claim that the salt reduces stress. Its a claim that just doesn't make any sense, and I have never seen proof of it.

Knowing all that, you can add Sodium Chloride salt to your tanks if you want. It's really just going to burn a hole in your wallet though. Useful applications of it can be found here. If you want a little more on aquarium salt, you can scroll up and read the rest of that thread .

I am treating for columnaris/mouth fungus with mardel maracyn plus and maracyn 2

That's good, good luck!

 

[rosita]

I have only used salt in my freshwater tanks for a couple of ich outbreaks. Salt (up to 2 Tbs. per US gal) combined with heat (slowly raise to @86-88 degrees F.) will aid in the spots (cysts) falling off, then maintaining the treatment for up to two weeks guarantees killing the tiny offspring which will be rather profilic. In this manner you can kill off all the ich. There are many myths about treatment; I've found this one to be the most effective (and least expensive). As far as parasites and bacterium go, I use the Maracyn, and other dependable meds.

 

[andywg]

Whether or not you've used it before with cories and they've been fine doesn't make it safe for them. Search around anywhere on the net, and you'll see that no one reccomends using salt with scaleless fish and even some reccomend not using it with tetras either. Yes you can probably get away with it and be fine, but that doesn't make it great for the fish. I would just be careful is all I'm saying.

Bignose found some studies that indicate some species of corys are very salt tolerant (can survive medium term with an SG of at least 1.005 IIRC) whereas others were amazingly intolerant of salt in the water.

Scales have absolutely no bearing on a fish's salt tolerence, it is down to their osmoregulatory functions. Some can deal with salts ok, others have their kidneys badly affected by it. There are some good posts on the subject by nmonks and bignose pointing out that Primary freshwater fish (those that evolved in FW) are generally very bad at dealing with salt, but secondary FW fish (those that started out in marine and have more recently moved into FW) tend to still have the means to deal with increased salt levels in the water.

Freshwater fish are so far off of saltwater fish making a comparison there is pretty crazy. A fish that has spent it's whole existence in saltwater is obviously going to be fine there regardless if it has scales or not.

And what about brackish catfish that start out in FW and move to SW? Or the genus Gymonthorax of moray eels? You have some species in that genus that need salt for their whole lives, whereas others (such as G. polyuranodon) can live their entire lives in freshwater. Being of the same genus these fish will be closely related yet they are all mostly scaleless and cope fine with the salt.