Mistake In Adding Salt - Advice Needed.

[positronic]

I recently bought some little 1 inch fish to sit with my pleco (big spotty 11 inch algae eater).

Overnight one of these little fellows expired. I had read that fish need salt in the water to maintain their slime and finding that the dead fish was not slimy I decided to buy salt and put salt in. I have never salted the tank before.

My tank is 44 US gallons. The side of the salt carton said to add one rounded tablespoonful for every 5 gallons. This works out as 9 tablespoons which I put in. Soon after the pleco started freaking out generally like it was in hot water and when it calmed down it was trying to dig its way into plants.

Straight away I emptied the tank and replaced the water.

Can anyone tell me if I should attempt to put salt in again and what quantity.

Also ... I have been treating tapwater with Tetra Aqua Aquasafe ("makes tap water safe"). This is quite expensive (about £5 for 100ml). It says on the side of the bottle to use 5ml for every 2 gallons so really I should be adding 110ml of this stuff to my 44 gallons.

I ran out I only put in a bit less than 50ml. Will this be ok. I also want to know what I can use to test the water safety.

I have decided to leave things alone for a while and stop meddling the tank is clean enough.

 

[Tolak]

I would not bother with the salt, tropical fish have evolved in fresh water, and do not need it. AquaSafe, while being an excellent product, is expensive. Seachem Prime is cheaper, and does just as good a job.

You do need to add more dechlorinator, it is nearly impossible to overdose a tank with dechlor. If you do not neuteralize the chlorine & chloramine it can affect your bio filtration, leading to ammonia & nitrite spikes, as well as being an irritant to your fish.

 

[positronic]

I would not bother with the salt, tropical fish have evolved in fresh water, and do not need it. AquaSafe, while being an excellent product, is expensive. Seachem Prime is cheaper, and does just as good a job.

You do need to add more dechlorinator, it is nearly impossible to overdose a tank with dechlor. If you do not neuteralize the chlorine & chloramine it can affect your bio filtration, leading to ammonia & nitrite spikes, as well as being an irritant to your fish.

Thanks dude i will get some more dechlorinator .

 

[stella the fella]

please note tropical fish such as mollies for example need salt in the water as they come from a brackish enviroment. start off adding salt slowly and gradually increase.

 

[ChuckV]

When you do add salt make sure it is aquarium salt. You said you added the 9 tablespoons. If you
add salt from scratch do not add the entire amount all at once AND more importantly never add
salt directly to the tank. Let it disolve first in water then add the water with the salt in it.

There is and always will be a debate whether to add salt or not to add salt. I guess it is split 50/50
but I am one of the one that does.

I recently bought some little 1 inch fish to sit with my pleco (big spotty 11 inch algae eater).

Overnight one of these little fellows expired. I had read that fish need salt in the water to maintain their slime and finding that the dead fish was not slimy I decided to buy salt and put salt in. I have never salted the tank before.

My tank is 44 US gallons. The side of the salt carton said to add one rounded tablespoonful for every 5 gallons. This works out as 9 tablespoons which I put in. Soon after the pleco started freaking out generally like it was in hot water and when it calmed down it was trying to dig its way into plants.

Straight away I emptied the tank and replaced the water.

Can anyone tell me if I should attempt to put salt in again and what quantity.

Also ... I have been treating tapwater with Tetra Aqua Aquasafe ("makes tap water safe"). This is quite expensive (about £5 for 100ml). It says on the side of the bottle to use 5ml for every 2 gallons so really I should be adding 110ml of this stuff to my 44 gallons.

I ran out I only put in a bit less than 50ml. Will this be ok. I also want to know what I can use to test the water safety.

I have decided to leave things alone for a while and stop meddling the tank is clean enough.

 

[Bignose]

There is and always will be a debate whether to add salt or not to add salt. I guess it is split 50/50
but I am one of the one that does.

It's only "split" because people don't know any better and stick with old traditions. There is no scientific basis for using salt in general everyday use. There is a little tiny bit for a few cases, such as reducing the acute toxicity of nitrite -- if you don't have the time to do a water change and the nitrite levels are high, adding a little salt can reduce its toxicity. Also, fighting a disease, the salt can be an effective killer of some parasites. But, it isn't a magic bullet at all, and it's effects have been very overstated.

The issue of salt has come up many, many times, and rather than re-type it all, I'm just going to quote one of my old posts:


There are several good threads on salt going around, please read through these, they'll give you all the reasons against salt.

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=210955
http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=211791
http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=168186
http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=155280
http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=157186

and specifically I'll just take a quote from some of my older posts:

Primary freshwater fishes are those that have remained, as far as we can tell from the fossil record, in fresh waters throughout their evolutionary heritage. Fishes that fall into this category include Characins, Carps and Catfishes.

Secondary freshwater fishes are those that had marine ancestors at some point in past time, but which moved into freshwater in order to occupy various niches. Cichlids are an example of secondary freshwater fishes - their nearest relatives are the marine Damselfishes of the Family Pomacentridae, and it's highly likely that both Families shared a common (and marine) ancestor.

Consequently, the secondary freshwater fishes still have at least some degree of osmoregulatory capacity for dealing with salt in the water, while the primary freshwater fishes never evolved it in the first place. So, placing primary freshwater fishes into water containing salt is a bad idea, and even modest amounts will kill them. Secondary freshwater fishes, on the other hand, can tolerate small amounts of salt, and indeed some members of secondarily freshwater Families are brackish in nature - the Cichlid fish Etroplus suratensis springs to mind as one example. Cyprinodontiformes also fall into this category - both the egg-laying Cyprinodontidae and the live-bearing Poeciliidae are also secondarily freshwater, some of the latter Family being fully brackish in the wild (indeed, the Giant Sailfin Molly, Poecilia vivipara, is fully euryhaline, and can live in fully marine water, as specimens captured in seawater off the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico testify eloquently).

Quite simply put, if your aquarium contains any primary freshwater fishes, do NOT add salt, as those fishes will suffer considerable stress if exposed to salt, and may even die. Even in the case of secondarily freshwater fishes, salt is only a good idea if the fishes concerned are KNOWN to inhabit brackish waters in the wild.

Most fishes fall into the category of being stenohaline, namely, they are either freshwater or fully marine. These fishes should only be exposed to the kind of water in which they occur in the wild with respect to salt content. Euryhaline fishes, that can migrate with some degree of freedom between freshwater, brackish and fully marine environments, are much fewer in number, and tend to be conspicuous in this regard when encountered in the textbooks - fishes such as Scats, Monos, Therapon jarbua, velifera Mollies and one or two of the Puffer Fishes are notable for this. Within the euryhaline division, there are those that can migrate more or less at will, and those that do so developmentally - the Puffer Fish Tetraodon nigroviridis is developmentally euryhaline, spending its juvenile stages in freshwater before migrating at a steady pace to increasingly saline waters until, as adults, they are strongly brackish or fully marine fishes. Once again, and I cannot stress this enough, it pays to do the research and find out what your fish is!

The main point is that many fish evolved in an a very low-salt environment and do not have the physical mechanisms to handle salt. Will it kill them immediately... No. But, it puts a significant amount of additional stress on the fish, with all the additional problems extra stress lead to: increased susceptibility to disease, shorter lifespan, less color, less likely to spawn, etc. If you have fish that do have the capabilities to deal with salt, it won't be as bad -- though if everything is healthy and fine now, why the need for a change? But, if you have fish that are intolerant of salt, it will lead to problems down the road.

ChuckV, if you have some unbiased research that can show the benefits of salt, I am very willing to look at them and read them. Just like I do with all of these issues, I promise I'll change my mind if some good evidence surfaces that shows how much salt helps. But, the vast majority of the research shows that salt is unnecessary and may even be harmful. So, of the people who have actually researched this issue and investigated what salt really does, there is no "split". The scientific evidence pretty much all points to no.

 

[positronic]

thanks a lot bignose et al

 

[aquadx]

Adding salt depends on the freshwater fish you have or want to have.

Freshwater lakes can be salty, not as salty as the ocean (1.020-1.030 g/cm3[sg]) but it does vary.

For example, the trace elements and sodium chloride that exists in a river is not going to be the same in a mountain lake.

Salt can be slowly added to a tank to decrease certain diseases (ick) if done with patience. The calcium (trace element) can also be very beneficial to some freshwater fish.

There is no rule to adding salts to water that sustains life, dont think this is an old "traditional" belief or anything: look it up in a used oceanography textbook if you truly want to know the scientific perspective on it.

Just remember, RESEARCH your fish to learn if they can handle salt/need it and if changing your tank's whole chemistry is going to negativly affect some "weaker" fish you may have.