Using Salt In Freshwater Tanks With Freshwater Fish

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So basically, i am a relatively new member of another fish forum (joined it because it specialises in large/tankbusting fish and massive aquariums and stuff, which i want to learn more about etc), however i encountered a problem with some of the other more long standing members there the other day.
Basically it is a disagreement over the use of salt on freshwater fish- even though there are a lot of seemingly very experienced and knowledgable members there, i am suprised to see so many of them readily advising others to use salt on fish like clown loaches as an ich treatment, or salt on red tailed catfish as a healing med for wounds, or just salt on pretty much any freshwater fish etc.
These members are advising this because in their experience they haven't noticed any ill effects of salt on their fish. But my side of the argument is that;

a. Salt shouldn't be advised so readily as a treatment for any type of fish,
b. Salt is harmful to a lot of types of fish, like many types of loaches and fish which come from the Amazon are quite intolerant of it for example. So you should avoid using salt on certain types of fish.

Some of the people there believe that salt is the best medicine for fish because it is "natural" and that basically all meds are stressful to fish and worse than salt in most cases. I disagree with this- i do not doubt that salt can be a very effective cure for certain fish diseases and parasites, however i also believe it can very very harmful to certain fish, and in such cases other types of medicines should be used instead of salt to cure the fish of its ills.


So far i think i have convinced one member not to treat his clown loaches with salt to rid them of whitespot. But there is another guy who is more difficult- we were basically both trying trying to help someone else out in a thread, their red tailed catfish had some barbel damage sustained from a physical injury and we were advising them on what the best course of action was to deal with the situation.
I advised that Melafix would be a good med to treat the RTC with, as it is a good antibiotic med for helping prevent secondary infection setting into wounds.
The other guy advised using salt to treat the RTC with. This is where we disagreed.

He says he's always used salt to treat his RTC with and hasn't noticed any illl effects. He does appear to be knowledgable on RTC and experienced with them, but i disagree with him about salt being the best cure-all medicine for RTC. My understanding of using salt on fish like RTC and why you shouldn't do it is because they originate from the Amazon, where salt is practically absent from their natural habitat, so they have not evolved to handle salt very well.

But i want to get more clued up on the exact science of salt use on freshwater fish to give a more convincing side of argument to guy to convince him not to advise salt as the preferable treatment on RTC in this case. I was reading this article below;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/education/bi...back2_rev.shtml


"Salt replacement [in freshwater fish] is solved by chloride secretory cells in the gills, which actively transport salts from the surrounding water into the blood". So am i right in thinking that the reason why relatively high levels of salt in the water can be harmful to some freshwater fish is because they absorb more salt than what they can handle when too much salt is introduced to the water for their salt handling ability, and this puts a strain on their internal organs and becomes stressful and damaging to the fish in question?


I know very well that you shouldn't use salt on certain freshwater fish, however i admit i'm not that clued up on the science and exact reasons of such things. So i want to learn a lot more on this kind of stuff- if anyone here can help explain this kind of stuff to me, i'd appreiciate it a great deal, as i want to not only learn more on such things either way, but also present a more convincing side of debate to those who disagree with my stance on this subject :good: .
 
Interesting. I disagree with those who say salt will fix anything. Sure it's natural, but MelaFix is quite natural too, with aloe and such. And just because it's natural doesn't mean it doesn't work. Think about drugs that cure illnesses. A lot of them have synthetic chemicals, but still work.
 
I agree that salt can be a good preventative and med for many fish, but is just as deadly as whats ailing an amazonian fish. As you said they are very intolerant of salt because the massive amounts of flooding and water flow over the millenia in the amazon has made the land almost 100 percent devoid of salt, and thus the water id devoid of it. It is very toxic to many fish like young angelfish, Discus, and the More naturally sensative fish. At my petsmart we need to keep the water half brackish to prevent any sort of ich outbreak. It works wonders in that respect, but all of the amazonian fish are very weak. We lose angels in droves as well as neon tetras. As far as loaches go, an extremely small salt dosage can benefit them IMO.
 
The use of bleeding people and leeches were common early medical practices. People used them and the patients got better...so it must be from the leeches and/or bleeding :oh:

If it didn't work, it was just too far gone to begin with :S

I think this parallels the use of salt in some respects. It seems to work, but is it really the salt that helps? Or are the fish just getting better? This question is especially relevant in the case of bacterial infections like the ones you've mentioned. There is a good chance that secondary infections would never have happened anyway.

For parasites, salt could potentially help but I doubt it is really helpful in the treatment of as many illnesses as claimed.
 
^ Well indeed, and that's where it's hard to gauge things. If fish are ill you're likely to naturally keep the water cleaner, which in itself works pretty well at non-life threatening things like minor injury, or diseases that the immune system can clear up. The salt itself reduces nitrite toxicity somewhat. I think it's almost a placebo- you put salt in, thinking it will help as a cure, and you don't pay much attention to other things you're doing that could also have helped.
 
Thankyou for all your help/advice everyone! I have just written a post based on info from the links poopsydrew & -germ- gave, plus everyone's advice/info like ArauraDiscus etc :good: . I'm hoping the RTC guy will come back to the thread and read my latest post, backed up with science explained and everything :good: !
 

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