Salt Bath

[TylerFerretLord]

Hmm, one of my mollies sems to be getting fungus(white fuzz), and I heard salt baths will help it.

How do you apply these?

Also, would it be safe to add salt to my tank when I do a water change? How much? Pre-dissolved, of course.

Would it harm my shrimp or plants? I currently have for plants:

Crapload of Elodea/anacharis
something called 'hedge plant'
amazon sword
small green plant similar to sword
banana plant (looks very cool, and seems to like my tank)

I have a tanks cycling, I can move them if it's a problem.

 

[Straydum]

if its just one, take that molly out into a mature hospital tank and add around 1teapon of salt per 2-3 gallons. regarding the water change, there isnt really a need for salt.

 

[TylerFerretLord]

I thought mollies were healthier with salt?

 

[Davidtq]

Salt Water dips are easy enough to do heres a link which I found to some instructions on how to do a dip http/wernersponds.com/sick%20fish.htm Ive not followed those instructions before I would normally just do 5 minutes in water thats came out of my marine tank.

mollies do benefit from salt in the tank, as do guppies, one of the tricks of the trade is to keep guppies in salt water to keep them alive for longer of course they suffer from osmotic shock z\ stress when dumped into the fresh water of customers tanks and quite often die quickly then. More often these days its wholesalers rather than retailers who keep their guppies and mollies in salt. Both mollies and guppies can be taken to full marine salinity, Mollies are used by many marine keepers to cycle marine tanks!

However you have to bring up the salinity of a tank slowly over time as the filter bacteria arent the same species between freshwater and marine and your filter will need time to adjust (as will your fish) Really to control salinity properly you will need to get a hydrometer, the floating glass type are normally cheapest and more accurate long term than the plastic swing needle type.

I would guess you want to head for a SG of 1.012 But that is just a guess its half way between full marine and fresh water. I would say you ought to bring it up over a period of a couple of weeks. Both mollies and guppies in the wild live in tidal estuary areas.

I would however be worried about your shrimps tolerance of salt water, I know nothing about that species.

Your plants would die, not many plants at all can tolerate a salt wate environment.