I will observe that many fish will withstand a salt treatment for ich. The amount of time the salt would be in the water for nitrite is not much different from this if anything it would be less time. However, there is one
huge difference in using salt as a med and using the chloride in salt for dealing with nitrite and that is the amount of salt involved.
Lets use an example of a 50 gallon tank which has some decor and substrate in it and maybe some live plants too. So we will figure that, since this is a USA tank where the the glass counts in the volume, that we should reduce that 50 gals by 15% to 42.5 gallons. Then lets assume we need to deal with a nitrite level of 10 ppm. Exactly how much salt would have to be added to the tank? Because we need to work with the weight of the salt, we have to use mg/l instead of ppm because we can weigh mg but not ppm. In water mg/l and ppm are pretty much equivalent so that makes things easy.
Step 1. Convert 42.5 gal. to liters by multiplying the gals by 3.875 to get 165 liters.
Step 2. Multiply 165 x 10 = 1,650 mg to get the amount of chloride needed to deal with 10 ppm of nitrite.
Step 3. Multiply 1,650 mg x 1.5 since chloride is roughly 2/3 of salt and we want 1,650 mg of chloride, so we need 2,475 mg of salt.
Step 4. Divide 2,475mg/1000 to get the gram weight we need = 2.475 grams of salt.
1/4 teaspoon of table salt weighs 2 grams, so, to deal with the 10 ppm of nitrite, one needs to add 3/8 of a teaspoon of salt to 42.5 gallons of water to combat that 10 ppm of nitrite. By comparison, to treat ich in this same tank the suggested dose is often 1 teaspoon of salt per gallon, or 42.5 teaspoons of salt. I have seen suggestions that even more salt than that be used. Clearly the concentrations of salt here and the potential affect on TDS is very minimal.
So what I wonder is if you put tetras into 42.5 gallons of water with 3/8 of a teaspoon of salt for the period of time it takes for the bacteria that consume the nitrite to establish, exactly how hard will this be on them? And lets not forget, as the nitrite levels begin to drop, so too can the amount of salt in the water.
On the other hand I know that Prime is a reducing agent, there is no way I would ever dose it at 5 times for anything. And then there is this "scientific" explanation from SeaChem about how Prime works to detoxify nitrite and nitrate:
Q: How does Prime make a difference in reducing Nitrates?
A: The detoxification of nitrite and nitrate by Prime (when used at elevated levels) is not well understood from a mechanistic standpoint. The most likely explanation is that the nitrite and nitrate is removed in a manner similar to the way ammonia is removed; i.e. it is bound and held in a inert state until such time that bacteria in the biological filter are able to take a hold of it, break it apart and use it. Two other possible scenarios are reduction to nitrogen (N2) gas or conversion into a benign organic nitrogen compound.
I wish we had some more "concrete" explanation, but the end result is the same, it does actually detoxify nitrite and nitrate. This was unexpected chemically and thus initially we were not even aware of this, however we received numerous reports from customers stating that when they overdosed with Prime they were able to reduce or eliminate the high death rates they experienced when their nitrite and nitrate levels were high. We have received enough reports to date to ensure that this is no fluke and is in fact a verifiable function of the product.
A great way to do science- our customers report. Can you imagine if all science were done like this? Nothing like controlled testing under lab conditions. Can SeaChem not measure nitrogen gas or detect the presence of a newly created organic compound?
I am sorry, but I am not in awe of SeaChem and all its products. A lot of what they do is "proprietary" which is a very clever way of never providing any scientific support for one's claims or details which could be verified independently. While they make some excellent products, I also believe they are experts at obfuscating certain issues in the pursuit of sales. Autotrophic nitrifying bacteria is a perfect example. Another is they state Prime won't slow a cycle, yet Dr. Hovanec, one of the researchers who identified tank bacteria, writes this about cycling a tank: "Do not add ammonia removers to bind the ammonia – overdosing with these products will just increase the cycling time."
Lets consider Prime. For a start, it also will affect the TDS of water some, the more you add the more it affects them. But also it will definitely remove oxygen. Start overdosing in a tank which may be a bit low in DO levels and you can have a problem. Overdose it in a tank where fish are already affected by nitrite and are short of O and it could become worse. Given the potentials here of overdosing Prime vs the potentials for that 3/8 teaspoon of salt, I am wondering which is really the greatest danger for the fish.
And then lets not forget about how nitrite works in a fish and what can be done to correct it. Normally, one cannot remove nitrite from fish, it has to work its way out naturally and it takes a day or two. The one thing I understand that can help reverse the effects of nitrite in a fish is Methylene Blue. But once it goes into the water, one will have a lot of trouble doing any testing as the water will be blue and test colors will no longer be rendered properly. It can also stain things in a tank. The standard treatment for dealing with nitrite its to stop it from entering the fish and this allows what is already inside to work its way out. The chloride in the salt does this while not affecting the cycling.
And we have not even touched on doing repeated 50% water changes and the added stress it can place on the fish especially when its a relatively new tank with new fish. When it comes to stress, a simple test for one form is if a fish bolts for cover it is being stressed. Longer term some inhabitants of a tank may become accustomed to water changes but many do not.
In conclusion, there are always at least two sides to every issues, so here is an interesting take on Prime from another point of view
http
/tbas1.com/forum/index.php?topic=149.0
It is an interest set of observations and I am not so sure i agree with the conclusions. I think dosing Prime at normal levels for control of chlorine and chloramine and the mild ammonia detoxifiying needed for that are just fine. It is the rest of it with which I have issues.
