Aquarium Salt Dosing

[blue acara]

good thread -informative read.

ive got a question, im using RO on my 3 tanks-malawi, central american and planted. i use rock salt on the malawi and the american to raise the GH. (among other things, eg epsom salt and seachem cichlid lake salt)

am i doing the right thing adding sodium chloride? is there something different i should be adding to raise the GH to the desired level?

 

[nmonks]

I'm far from an expert on African cichlids, so I suggest that you re-ask that question there. But, my understanding is that tonic salt and marine mix salt shouldn't be used with Rift Valley cichlids. In the aquarium healthcare book I have, salt is linked with something called "Malawi Bloat", a dropsey-like condition.

The problem is that Lakes Malawi and Tanganyika have totally different compositions of minerals in them compared with the sea: most carbonate salts rather than chloride salts.

Unless you actually have very soft and acidic water, then adding salt to the aquarium probably does more harm than good. Assuming you have coral sand and tufa rock in the aquarium, your hardness should be fairly high already, and adding something Calcium Plus to the filter to put even more calcium carbonate in the water would have a much more positive effect than simple sea salt.

That said, I've heard of hardy Malawi cichlids (like zebras) doing quite well in brackish water. So some at least may be quite salt-tolerant. But I still would never recommend them as fish for brackish water tanks, and adding salt to the water probably doesn't make them any healthier or happier.

Central Americans are very different, and many species naturally slip into brackish waters in parts of their ranges. Numerous "Cichlasoma" have been reported in fairly brackish water and a good few even in fully marine environments (C. tetracanthus, C. haitiensis, and the two Texas cichlids, for example). None needs salt though, and I'm sure that as a general rule of thumb they'd sooner have water without sea salt but with some carbonate source like coral sand or Calcium Plus used in the aquarium and/or filter.

Cheers,

Neale

 

[blue acara]

thanks for the info. the reason im adding salt is basically because of this website link. i know you cant trust everything you read, but this link has been posted a lot on this forum as well.

my water is very soft 0 dGH-RO
i do use coral sand im my filter- im not sure what dGH this on its own would achieve, after adding 1 teaspoon of sodium chloride per 4 uk gallons of water change water my dGH is 15 ish.

i will look up Calcium Plus as a possible alternative to sea salt for my tank.

 

[Tommy Gunnz]

To the best of my understanding, the use of RO water in some instances is not advisable because it is basically lacking all of the trace elements that some fish are used to or need to thrive. For example, you are trying to raise the general hardness of your water after you have spent the time and money to ensure that the water is free of all minerals, or at least close to being free of all of them. This same thing can be said about using distilled water which is, from what I have read, even more pure water than RO water is. I have learned all of this from using RO water in my saltwater tank when I became curious about what elements I should suppliment the tank with. In saltwater though, RO water is generally a good thing because the salts used to make it saltwater contain sufficient and balanced (supposedly anyways) trace minerals and chemicals required to maintain the life most often kept in these tanks.

I have read and been advised by a lot of people to use rift lake salts in my cichlid tanks. Supposedly these salts will bring back all of the naturally occuring minerals and Ph levels found in the spacific lakes the cichlids come from. There is a whole range of products like this at almost all of my LFS around here based upon the different lakes (e.g. Lake Malawi Cichlid salt).

I have never used these salts because all of the fish in my tank have come from local breeders who use the same tap water (or close to it) that I have from my city water service. I felt at the time that these fish should then be acclimated to the type of water I have and I do not even buffer the Ph at all (which, by the way, is at 7.2 most of the time) and I have not seen any ill effects from doing so. I have researched a bit more and found that many websites and people on forums like this one agree that a particular Ph number is less important than keeping a steady or constant Ph. I admit that I am assuming then that my fish are fully acclimated to not having some minerals that are typically in their natural lake's water but not found in mine. On the other hand, I am not a chemist or own a kit that would tell me exactly what my water has in it or what it is lacking compared to Lake Malawi either so my assumption works well for me right now.

This thread has gotten me to rethink some of that though and so I will try to see what I can find out on the internet and at my library. I would also like to appologize to DiscusLova for basically 'hijacking' this thread.

 

[nmonks]

Fair enough. As I said, I'm not that experienced with Rift Valley cichlids, and when I have kept them, it's been in London where the water is hard and alkaline enough already.

Perhaps, at a low dosage, and in conjuction with the other mineral salts, NaCl is useful for replicating the chemical composition in the African lakes. That said, the chemical composition of Lake Malawi is basically calcium, magnesium, carbonate, and silicate ions (ref: Paul Loiselle, "African Cichlids", 1988). There's virtually no sodium or chloride ions in it at all. So using marine salt to make a "mix" for anything from Lake Malawi seems completely. Lake Tanganyika is different, with sodium being about 1/3rd of the cations and chloride about 1/4th the anions (same reference). So maybe one part in three sea salt isn't a bad approximation there.

Cheers,

Neale

thanks for the info. the reason im adding salt is basically because of this website link. i know you cant trust everything you read, but this link has been posted a lot on this forum as well.