Moving fish from salt to no salt

A

ArkyLady

Addict In Training
Nov 27, 2002
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Arkansas
I'm breeding some mollies and I've been adding salt to their water at 1 Tablespoon per 5 gallons (for both adults and fry). The babies will be going to an LFS where they don't add salt to their water. My question is with the low amount of salt I'm using, will it be too much of a shock for them to go from this water over to non-salted water?

The tanks are all on a central filtration system, so there is no way for me to really wean them off the salt, but I'd rather work out a way to accomplish this then to have the babies end up dying. Thanks for any input!
 
A gradual adaptation can be done--slower the better. If you can't do so in a tank, then your best bet is going to be to put them in a separate container (tub of any kind) with some of their current water, and add 10% pure freshwater once an hour for 5 hours, remove half the water, and repeat. This will get it down to very close to 0, and they should be fine.

You don't have a great deal of salt in there, so there shouldn't a problem, though going straight from your water to FW would be a bit of a shock, and increase their odd of getting ick.
 
Maybe on the day you take them you could put them in a bucket with part old (salty) water and part new unsalted water, diluting the salt further, maybe even doing a 50% water change right before you bag them. That way the salt level will be as low as possible so that when the store unbags them it won't be quite as much shock.
 
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