Guppys And Salt?

[Rorie]

surprisingly i know very little about the common guppy and molly! I read mollys need salt....how about guppys? If they share a tank are guppys ok with salt to satisfy mollys?

 

[Proud Pastry]

You can keep Mollies and Guppies together in the same tank
I don't believe Mollies NEED salt, salt is really just used for when your fish is sick. Like if they're clamping their fins or have a bacterial infection.
Guppies can handle salt as well, I've used salt for my guppies and platies when they were clamping their fins and rubbing into things, worked really well :3

 

[Ruskull]

Correct, Guppies & Mollies do not require salt. Some folks keep them with salt all the time though, so it can be done but it isn't necessary. Like the previous poster said, salt can be used to medicate so having salt in the tank all the time takes away that ability, which is a bad thing in my opinion. I've treated Ich with salt only and it worked great.

 

[nmonks]

Ruskull is correct that you don't need to add salt. There are good arguments for using salt when keeping Mollies, and certainly they're easier to keep that way. But is it essential? No.

Guppies shouldn't need salt at all unless you have soft water, in which case salt helps them enormously. Guppies have a high tolerance for salt, and (wild Guppies at least) can be adapted to fully marine conditions for extended periods. Half-strength seawater is easily tolerated by Guppies indefinitely, even the fancy varieties.

However, Ruskull is not right about using salt reducing its value as a medication. When used to treat whitespot, it's the salinity (2-3 grammes/litre) that kills the free-living stage of the whitespot parasite. If you have a freshwater tank and then add the salt, then the parasite is killed. If you routinely add 2-3 grammes of salt per litre, then the parasite will be killed in just the same way. It doesn't matter either way because the ambient salinity that kills them, not the action of adding salt. Put another way, you add salt to kill whitespot, but if you add salt all the time anyway, then the whitespot can't get established in the first place.

Bottom line, if you want to add salt to a livebearer aquarium -- and many people do -- then go ahead. It won't make it more difficult to treat whitespot because whitespot can't get started, assuming of course you're adding 2-3 g/l. Salt doesn't medicate against other diseases well, if at all, so for things like finrot, you'd need to use your usual medications (though at salinities above 5 g/l, fungal infections are rare).

Cheers, Neale

Correct, Guppies & Mollies do not require salt. Some folks keep them with salt all the time though, so it can be done but it isn't necessary. Like the previous poster said, salt can be used to medicate so having salt in the tank all the time takes away that ability, which is a bad thing in my opinion. I've treated Ich with salt only and it worked great.

 

[PrairieSunflower]

I used to keep my guppies in lightly salted water, they had far less health issues then. I did wean them from it though since I wanted to have other fish in with them who aren't as good with salt.

 

[Ruskull]

Ruskull is correct that you don't need to add salt. There are good arguments for using salt when keeping Mollies, and certainly they're easier to keep that way. But is it essential? No.

Guppies shouldn't need salt at all unless you have soft water, in which case salt helps them enormously. Guppies have a high tolerance for salt, and (wild Guppies at least) can be adapted to fully marine conditions for extended periods. Half-strength seawater is easily tolerated by Guppies indefinitely, even the fancy varieties.

However, Ruskull is not right about using salt reducing its value as a medication. When used to treat whitespot, it's the salinity (2-3 grammes/litre) that kills the free-living stage of the whitespot parasite. If you have a freshwater tank and then add the salt, then the parasite is killed. If you routinely add 2-3 grammes of salt per litre, then the parasite will be killed in just the same way. It doesn't matter either way because the ambient salinity that kills them, not the action of adding salt. Put another way, you add salt to kill whitespot, but if you add salt all the time anyway, then the whitespot can't get established in the first place.

Bottom line, if you want to add salt to a livebearer aquarium -- and many people do -- then go ahead. It won't make it more difficult to treat whitespot because whitespot can't get started, assuming of course you're adding 2-3 g/l. Salt doesn't medicate against other diseases well, if at all, so for things like finrot, you'd need to use your usual medications (though at salinities above 5 g/l, fungal infections are rare).

Cheers, Neale

Correct, Guppies & Mollies do not require salt. Some folks keep them with salt all the time though, so it can be done but it isn't necessary. Like the previous poster said, salt can be used to medicate so having salt in the tank all the time takes away that ability, which is a bad thing in my opinion. I've treated Ich with salt only and it worked great.

I see what you're saying but at the same time there are different forms of Ich, and fish can still get it even in an aquarium that has AQ salt added. In fact there are marine strains of Ich (Cryptocaryon irritans), but then having the salt wouldn't help or hurt either way if the form of Ich that you end up with is resistant to salt.

 

[nmonks]

Yes and no.

Yes, there are different diseases called whitespot. These include the freshwater species Ichthyophthirius multifiliis and the marine species Cryptocaryon irritans. But in both cases the parasites involved are stenohaline -- viable across only a narrow salinity range. So in most situations where freshwater fish have whitespot, raising the salinity to 2-3 g/l will deal with it. Likewise, where marine fish are concerned, reducing the specific gravity to 1.018 or even slightly less won't harm the fish but will kill the parasite.

So far as I'm aware, there's no evidence keeping freshwater fish in slightly saline water (i.e., 2-3 g/l salinity) makes freshwater whitespot "salt tolerant". There is a reasonable literature on the subject of Ichthyophthirius and salinity; you can use Google Scholar to peruse the abstracts of these at the very least.

Freshwater velvet disease is different, and does seem to be a bit more salt tolerant. But then the question is whether aquarists can reliably distinguish between these superficially similar parasites. Often, they can't.

In any event, the bottom line is that if you maintain Guppies (or any other salt-tolerant fish) in slightly brackish conditions, whitespot as good as never happens, though other, similar-looking diseases like velvet or lymphocystis may. This approach is quite well established, and equivalent approaches are used in fish farming, for example, by moving fish up and down estuaries to shift external parasites. Whether this is an ecologically good thing for fish farmers to do is a whole other debate!

Cheers, Neale

I see what you're saying but at the same time there are different forms of Ich, and fish can still get it even in an aquarium that has AQ salt added. In fact there are marine strains of Ich (Cryptocaryon irritans), but then having the salt wouldn't help or hurt either way if the form of Ich that you end up with is resistant to salt.

 

[Rorie]

Thanks for all the replies. The reason i am askign is that i have guppys in one half and mollys in the other half of a tank (4 ft long with a divider in the middle). The guppys are all fine, but the mollys seem to hang out at the bottom of the tank a lot....hence i was wondering what was up with them. Water parameters are fine. PH is about 7 but i have just added some coral sand to get it up a bit. Any ideas?

 

[nmonks]

If the only fish you have are Guppies and Mollies, then by all means add salt. Even at SG 1.003 (around 5-6 grammes/litre) the Guppies won't be in the least upset, and nor will your filter bacteria.

On the other hand, one issue may be space rather than water chemistry. Mollies like space to spread out. They also appreciate a bit of current, though nothing too turbulent. If your Mollies are "treading water" though and have clamped fins, that's a whole other problem, and may mean they're too cold, the water's wrong in terms of chemistry, or they're stressed in some other way.

pH 7 is a bit low for Mollies. There's a "Rift Valley salt mix" on my website (though I didn't invent it) that might be useful; make it up, and use either a half or full dose, as you prefer. With Mollies, the harder the water, the better; 15-25 degrees dH is probably the ideal, together with a pH around 8. Farmed Mollies appreciate warmth, so do check the temperature; 24-28 C seems to work well, even though wild Mollies are much more tolerant of cooler water than this.

Cheers, Neale

Thanks for all the replies. The reason i am askign is that i have guppys in one half and mollys in the other half of a tank (4 ft long with a divider in the middle). The guppys are all fine, but the mollys seem to hang out at the bottom of the tank a lot....hence i was wondering what was up with them. Water parameters are fine. PH is about 7 but i have just added some coral sand to get it up a bit. Any ideas?

 

[Fish Lover Forever]

Can Siamese fighters deal with salt?

 

[dannybgoode]

Why would you want it to? For disease control or to stock something thank requires brackish water with it?

Cheers

Danny B

 

[nmonks]

They are fine with 2 g/l across a couple weeks as required for treating whitespot.

On the other hand, routine addition of salt at this concentration may not be a good idea. There's some debate on this, and a lot of Betta keepers do seem to routinely add small amounts of salt. But I wouldn't advise it.

Cheers, Neale

Can Siamese fighters deal with salt?

 

[Fish Lover Forever]

It is only because I have a tank with guppies, platies and mollies and they are all okay with it but it is just the siamese fighter I was wondering about.... It is just in case one of them gets sick!