Adding Salt

[midnightrider]

Hi this is the first time i have ever added salt to my tank. It is a 29 gallon with 2 mollies and a neon tetra and two baby fish. That i dont know what kind they are. They could be neons or platys but i cant tell i lost the other neons and platys to. Ich which is treated now. How much salt do i add and will it hurt the babies thanks

 

[nukeonekitty]

You don't need salt. The mollys will do fine with out aquarium salt. I don't think anyone here does use salt.

 

[timmystood]

I disagree nukeonekitty. Mollies will benefit a little aquarium salt, as will most liverbearers and most gourami's.

Midnightrider, welcome to the forum! The salt you have should have instructions on how much to add... every make is different so it's not like I can say for sure how much of your brand you need to add

 

[andywg]

Marine salt will benefit mollies. Aquarium salt is just snake oil.

 

[helterskelter]

If cared for porpley no livebearers needs Salt....

Do weekly water chages or bi-weekly and that will help if any problems.

Salt reduces stress on the internal organs of most fish allowing then to live better in poor condations!!!!!!

Reading every where that Livebearers need salt is so annoying as 98% of livebearers will have never seen any salt in the nateral habbitat.

 

[WILDER]

Mollies thrive in brackish water, but you can't make it brackish with the fish you keep.

 

[WILDER]

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=137887

 

[helterskelter]

I've read Neil's post and he's quite right on the facts that it helps with the fish to fish problems but they dont need it all the time.

Im tend to use salt to fight problems first befor chemicals for the reason's I've said.

But i dont like the Idea of "All livebearers", The molly and sail fin are about the only one that activaly lives in brackish and marine waters but it's more to find new freshwaters to poulate, All platys and swords nateralt come from the centeral highlands of mexico and never seen salt till we added it.

Guppies will for short periods goto brackish for the same reasons as the molly.

 

[andywg]

If cared for porpley no livebearers needs Salt....

Do weekly water chages or bi-weekly and that will help if any problems.

Salt reduces stress on the internal organs of most fish allowing then to live better in poor condations!!!!!!

Reading every where that Livebearers need salt is so annoying as 98% of livebearers will have never seen any salt in the nateral habbitat.

As the link posted by wilder shows, a number of mollies are in fact brackish but are just able to survive in FW.

Also, the bit about salt allowing fish to survive in poor conditions is bad science. Fish in FW expel water from their bodies at a pretty high rate to maintain an internal salt level higher than the water they are in, if they didn't then they would effectively drown as they would lose all the salt to the water and take in water instead until an equilibrium is formed.

Some people hypothesised that by placing salt in the water you lower the strain on the osmoregulatory system of the fish as the fish needs to push less water out to keep the same balance. However many fish just aren't designed to deal with this water with salt in, and those that are do not really benefit as the levels suggested for "tonic treatment" is too low.

For this reason tonic/aquarium salt is a snake oil, but for the reasons in wilder's link mollies will benefit from marine salt being added to their aquarium

 

[Shaun]

Thanks for clearing this up about salt and mollies as i was intending to buy some mollies today but my LFS said salt is a MUST for mollies so i didnt get them in the end. I didnt know if my other fish would be ok (until i asked someone on this forum), with the amount of salt the mollies needed.