salt for cycling a tank?? what????
- Thread starter grannylvsfish
- Start date
Rubbish. Depending on the circumstances, it may be impossible to manage the water changes required to keep nitrite < 0.1 ppm - you may consider not staying up all night to do water changes every few hours to be "lazy" but I call it reasonable. Salt at the low levels recommended is a good precaution. No-one's suggesting letting the nitrite rise to dangerous levels, but using salt as a precaution in case it does.
If you are doing a fishy cycle because of pure impatience, then you should at least have the responsibility to stock slowly and minimize feeding to keep levels low and control the nitrite levels.
No need to stay up all night and monitor and do water changes. Just as their is no need for the salt.
The water changes can be done without major life style changes.
No need to stay up all night and monitor and do water changes. Just as their is no need for the salt.
The water changes can be done without major life style changes.
spirals
i will eat you in your sleep
gotta love the good old fish guys who are good at seeming like they know what they are talking about..
but anyways, thats a lot of fish to start out with, and I foresee a lot of ammonia spikes and cycling issues in her future. While I've heard of using aquarium salt to reduce stress, I find it interesting that he went so far as to say that salt would help cycle the tank. If he's giving her all these fish for a brand new tank I would say he has no clue what a cycle is or how to safely see a tank through one.
My suggestion would be for her to take all of the fish back, then read the stickies on fishless cycling and do some research before getting fish. And she needs to realize when some people are being helpful and when they are just pushing to get you to buy more fish/stuff.
the only cure-all i recommend to customers are water changes, and even then sometimes you gotta do some more reasearch
but anyways, thats a lot of fish to start out with, and I foresee a lot of ammonia spikes and cycling issues in her future. While I've heard of using aquarium salt to reduce stress, I find it interesting that he went so far as to say that salt would help cycle the tank. If he's giving her all these fish for a brand new tank I would say he has no clue what a cycle is or how to safely see a tank through one.
My suggestion would be for her to take all of the fish back, then read the stickies on fishless cycling and do some research before getting fish. And she needs to realize when some people are being helpful and when they are just pushing to get you to buy more fish/stuff.
the only cure-all i recommend to customers are water changes, and even then sometimes you gotta do some more reasearch
You cannot keep nitrite at zero. Any level higher than that is potentially dangerous. Therefore, any fishy cycle will benefit from salt to prevent uptake of nitrite.
You can keep nitrite effectively at zero, within the ranges of any test kit currently available on the open market, that is with in the generally accepted price range of hobbyists.
No fishy cycle or long established tank will have benefits from continuous use of salt. It has extremely short term benefits for specific reasons and Prime does a better job at limiting nitrite toxcitity than does salt.
I have 15 tanks that show me differently. "Aquarium" salt's only use is to improve profits for the LFS. Salt only needs to be used for medicating or a Brackish or SW tank. The most beneficial thing for a fishy cycle is frequent, large water changes. No magic bullet...
No salt for me please. I don't even own any salt but all my tanks are healthy and my fish all prosper. My endlers have gone from 5 pairs to about 200 since October. My community tank has no issues although my angel in there is getting old and looks it. My rainbow cichlids are doing fine with their platy tank mates, My platy tank has some fry even though there is a betta in there with them. The rest of the tanks are just more of the same. The only special water treatment I have is for my SA community tank. It gets RO water mixed in with the tap water to hold the TDS down to a reasonable level.
I never mentioned aquarium salt; I would use ordinary table salt in the event that I found a nitrite spike which could not be controlled by water changes, and believe me this has happened.
In an ideal world it wouldn't be necessary, but in real life newbies often overstock a new tank to the point where water changes will not control nitrites, and many LFSs will not take fish back. The newbie has no option but to brazen it out. In these situations, salt is a cheap and effective prevention of fish loss through nitrite poisoning.
