So What Do You Think If This?

[Jayba]

I was in a fish department where I overheard a department manager say to a customer "Do you have salt? You need salt! Every fish we have needs salt" and proceeded to quote a dosage that would be good for treating disease.

I felt like telling this woman to skip the salt and save her cash. I just shook my head and walked away. Lol.

[Znaika]

Totally depends on what kind of fishes they have. Semipermeable membranes of freshwater fishes' cells are more "permeable" than of saltwater ones. As a result, osmosis gradually increases salinity of their fluids and over time inevitably affects their health in a negative way. How much - depends on dissolved salts concentration and the duration duration of the exposure.

[Jayba]

True, but unless you have placed your fish into RO water that is nearly void of salts, there is enough salt/minerals in Alberta's hard water that this a mute point.

The use of salt in freshwater tanks has recently been a controversial subject of some debate. When we speak of "salt", this is a confusing term, because salts are a large heterogeneous group that consists of any ionically bound elements or compounds. The salt that most freshwater aquarists mean to speak of, however, is NaCl (sodium chloride).

Salt adds electrolytes, which reduce osmotic stress to the gills. This is especially important during disease, when the ability of the fish to maintain homeostasis with its surrounding water is disturbed.

Salt can aid in the production of the slime layer and speed up the healing of some wound sites. This occurs by hyperosmolarity... fish have a certain specific gravity (concentration of total dissolved solids) in their bodily fluids, and so does the surrounding water... if the surrounding water has a slightly higher concentration, the fluids from the wound site move into the water around it, and fresh plasma goes in to replace it, creating more blood flow in that area (makes it heal faster).

Many pathogens, such as Ichthyophthirius (the protozoan that causes "ick"), do not particularly like salt.

Despite some of its (rather minor) potential benefits, there are a lot of potential dangers to consider in using salt, especially if you are a beginner. Please make special note of these.

Although NaCl is not composed of any truly "hard" ions (laundering ions of Mg or Ca, which produce the hard water stains on your tank and are the only ions that count in true carbonate hardness), it does raise the total dissolved solids in the water... these add up to raise general hardness, or GH. This is not well tolerated by a number of fish, especially true softwater fish from places like the Amazon river basin, where there are very few electrolytes of any kind in the water. These fish include (but are not limited to) neon tetras, cardinal tetras, rummy nose tetras, hatchetfish, elephantnoses, and discus... in addition, most live plants will not tolerate it either. DO NOT USE SALT WITH ANY OF THESE FISH, AS SOME HAVE RATHER STRINGENT PH/KH/GH REQUIREMENTS, AND COULD DIE AS A RESULT OF THIS ADDITION. There are other Amazonian fish such as angelfish which will not particularly prefer salt, but may possibly tolerate it because they are hardier. Salt can also have an unpredictable effect on other fish, since there are no bodies of water in Nature which are naturally saline (high in NaCl) but very low in "true" hardness ion concentration (Mg, Ca, etc)... Rift African species, for example, need more than just ordinary "aquarium salt" (NaCl alone).

Salt, if not predissolved carefully, can give fish bad burns. This is especially true of scaleless fish, such as some types of eels and scaleless catfish.

The efficacy (effectiveness) of salt has not been proven experimentally to the satisfaction of many in the pet trade.

THE GENERAL RULE IN ANY TANK, ESPECIALLY THAT OF A BEGINNER, IS TO STEER CLEAR OF ADDING ARTIFICIAL ADDITIVES UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. Salt in many tanks is not... in a livebearer only tank (such as one with mollies, swordtails, guppies, or platys), I would consider recommending it (these are moderately hard water fish which like electrolytes in their water... some, such as the molly, from it's Yucatan peninsula natural habitat, actually prefer it because they are semi-brackish), but since so many community tanks contain more delicate, soft water fish such as the neon tetra, I usually do not. Please consider all your fish carefully when setting up a tank environment, as harmony in a mini-ecosystem is extremely difficult to achieve and any one thing can throw it off. The chemical additives goes not only for salt addition, but also for medications, pH up/down solutions, snail/algae eradicator, etc... if you are a novice and not entirely familiar with what you are adding, USE GREAT CAUTION, and educate yourself completely on the potential effects (some of which are unpredictable) of that product before you add it.

But I guess you also consider the poor water conditions that many unexperienced fish keepers keep their fish in, salt may help in the long run.

Edited March 30, 2013 by Jayba

[ckmullin]

I would have said something 100% !

[flyfisher]

Usually when I hear clerks giving bad advise I bite my tongue,but after hearing a clerk recommend a crayfish for a customer who was going to put it in his young daughters gold fish tank,I had to say something.It would have been a hard lesson for someone so young.

[Jayba]

I thought about calling her out on some if the dumb things I've heard her say over the past year, but she wouldn't get it anyways.

[DivineHammer]

so what do you think about adding Epson salt to the water once a month?