salt

Several friends use salt in their tanks as a general tonic/bactericide. I do myself in my coldwater tank but have never tried it in my top tanks because I'm not sure which fish it benefits and which it will harm. Anyone give me some guidance? Water quality in all tanks is good and well maintained but water is very hard - almost off the test scale I have

This might help.

now that's a soup loaches should normally have low pH and gH, so should tetras, whereas mollies and platies should have high gH and some salt.

perhaps splitting it up a bit would be better?

This tank will be okay as long as the fish are acclimatised to the water conditions.

I keep a similar mix no problems with pH7.0 and everyone's apparently doing fine to the point of all wanting to breed.

Most fish shop fish are acclimatised to harder water than their natural cousins.

I don't, however, think tetras like too much salt in their water.

Think I'll leave well alone - like they say 'If it ain't broke......'

I use trace amounts of salt for my mixed community tank........giant danio, several zebrafish, rosy barb, buenos aires tetra, pleco & algea eater. Keeps the fish 'happy' and cuts back on potential infections (I've actually never had a disease problem at all). I've also used salt for angels, gouramies, loaches, mollies, swordfish and for my cold-water goldfish tank. Plants have thrived perfectly fine. You do get a little more buildup from evaporation, but it's easy to clean. Hope this helps a little.

Can I ask what concentration you are using?

I also add trace amounts of salt for my mainly Tetra tank, through a crystaline water conditioner that has sodium chloride in it.

I too have never had ich or fish fungus, but I've stopped using this particular conditioner of late and was considering micro-dosing sodium chloride on it's own.

The liquid de-chlorinators I am using now claim to replace lost electrolytes, and one has Aloe Vera as well - IMO, electrolytes are salts - I could be wrong but I can't see any simpler way to do it in a commercial product.

The normal recommended salt dose is 1 tablespoon per 5 gallons/20L, but I feel this is too strong for Tetras and salt sensitive fish.

thanks,

I've kept tetra's in water with 1 teaspoon per 5 gallons and they did excellant. Right now the only tetras I have are in a planted tank, so no salt is added.

I use the 1 tablespoon / 5 gallons conc., as you mentioned, with Doc Wellfish's Aquarium Salt. It's actually made from evaporated seawater, which means it contains mostly sodium chloride, but also has trace amounts of sulfate (SO4), magnesium, calcium, potassium, and bicarbonate (HCO3) (in order of most to least abundant)......this is what is generically called 'electrolytes' (trace salts). I use AquaSafe dechlorinator/conditioner, which mainly contains trace compounds to protect fish slime and chelators to bind metals, but no additional electrolytes. Using both has worked wonderfully for me for several years. Hope this is helpful!

Milky G

LFS where I worked kept EVERYTHING at 1 tsp/gallon rock salt, including discus, tetras, corydoras, and so forth. They also ran with aquarisol (copper). I never saw a single spot of ich or velvet the whole time I worked there. Since you have plants, you may want to go lower, but don't worry about the fish - a bit of salt is great for them!

Old rule of thumb - fish from soft waters don't tolerate salt to well, while fish from hard waters like salt......... Frank

Some freshwater aquarium fish species are native to brackish waters, but most are not. A little bit of salt is occasionally used to help heal injuries; but it gets removed by regular partial water changes. Unless you are treating a problem that is know to respond to salt, leave it out of your freshwater aquarium.

i always have salt in my aquarium, there is still some left from when i was treating a fungal infection. i have tetras and danios in my tank also, and they are doing fine.