To Salt, Or Not To Salt, That Is The Question!

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If mollies can live in freshwater in the wild, why do so many experienced aquarists recommend keeping them in brackish water? To understand this, it is important to realise that marine salt mix does more than simply raise the salinity.

Marine salt mix contains table salt plus a huge variety of other mineral salts, including a large quantity of salts that raise pH and increase hardness. The addition of marine salt to molly aquarium provides mollies with water chemistry much closer to that which they prefer and also acts as a buffer, inhibiting any subsequent water chemistry changes. Tonic salt can’t do this, because it contains nothing by sodium chloride, a chemical that doesn’t modify pH or hardness at all. An aquarist adding a certain amount of salt to the molly aquarium is effectively guaranteeing the correct water conditions without any need to mess about with pH buffers or water hardening agents.

Plain table salt — sodium chloride — does have some useful functions though. It dramatically reduces the toxicity of nitrite and nitrate, a purpose for which it was put to extensive use in the early days of the hobby. Because filters were less efficient and water changes performed less often (on the theory that “old water” was better) adding small amounts of table salt to freshwater aquaria actually did some good. Repackaged table salt, known as tonic salt, is still available to aquarists, though it has no real purpose in the modern hobby. After all, better filtration and more water changes are the best way to deal with poor water quality! But mollies do appear to be peculiarly sensitive to nitrite and nitrate, despite their widespread sale as beginners’ fish. In saline water, the toxicity of these compounds is so much less that the fish come to no harm; in fact, mollies have been used for decades to mature marine and brackish water aquaria. But in freshwater tanks, they need excellent water quality if they are to do well.

Salt, whether marine mix or table salt, is also an effective anti-parasite and antifungal medication when used in sufficient quantities. Teaspoon-per-gallon quantities, though often recommended, will have at most a marginal effect compared with commercial whitespot or fungus remedies. But once the salinity gets to a fairly high level, around 20-25% the salinity of normal seawater (SG 1.004-1.006) then most freshwater parasites find it very difficult to survive, and fungal infections tend to fade away quite rapidly. Mollies kept in around half-strength seawater (SG 1.012) will as good as never get infected with parasites because very few, if any, brackish water parasites have managed to become established in the aquarium hobby. By contrast, mollies kept in freshwater aquaria are extraordinarily prone to a number of diseases, including whitespot, fungus, finrot, and “the shimmies” — a neurological disorder that manifests itself as an inability for the fish to swim properly, instead the fish can only tread water, rocking from side to side. Though the absence of salt likely doesn’t cause these problems, adding salt is certainly one way to deal with them. Low temperatures are likely a factor as well, because a fish’s immune system will be optimised to work within a certain range of temperatures. The aquarium standard 25˚C (77˚F) is at the low end of what mollies enjoy, and it is probably this, coupled with poor water quality, that makes them so disease-prone in the average community tank.

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Thanks to wetwebmedia​