salt for cycling a tank?? what????

[ct-death]

All I can say is at this point is really that we knowingly accepted the responsability to care for these fish as best we are able. Doing a fish-cycle does not acheive this. A fishless-cycle on the other hand can.

Secondly, please take what has bene said here. If you wish to counter every nuiance feel free, but I fear you have your mind set, which is certainly your perogative.

Just please understand that we only trying to help (the fish).

Lastly, the quotes around potentially were placed b/c, it is of my own personal opinion that maintaining nitrItes at or near 0.1 or less is all we can achieve and trys to mimic an environment in which fish have evolved to thrive in (even by your own acount nitrItes can never be 0.0).

Thus, it's not at a toxic level per se (I say this losely), but more importantly fish have adapted to this naturally, are biologically equiped to so so, and again the use of salt is used in the pathway of nitrIte uptake, but it's a) a stressor and b) do you have any idea what salt concentrations are required to block say 0.3ppm nitIte in a 36G tank with 370GPH filtration with X number of fish (and type) actively contributing to the system as you feed X amount of food, to say nothing of the salt's effectiveness or % uptake, etc., etc.???

I'm sure its possible, but WAY too complicated for what's rally necessary and proven quite effective IMO.

If your goal is truly to protect the fish against ALL harm (bravo), but why do a fish-cycle in the first place!?!

 

[KarlTh]

Well, of course a fishless cycle is best. But when someone has already got fish in the tank because of advice from the lfs, then IME and IMO, using salt in this way is the next best thing. Bear in mind that many lfss have never heard of fishless cycling; most look at you as if you've come down from the moon when you mention it. The normal advice, which is what most newbies get, is to use fish. This is the situation we are then faced with when people post on here because their fish are dying. Perhaps this is the cause of the disagreement; I'm not talking about the ideal and best practice; I'm talking about the best advice that can be given once someone has already been directed down the sub-optimal route.

You can calculate the salt required - it depends upon the concentration of nitrite and that alone, because it's all about relative concentrations of nitrite and chloride - but there's no need; the usually quoted 1/2 tsp per 10 gallons is enough to counter the sort of levels of nitrite which are likely to be encountered whilst being low enough to do no lasting harm. Bear in mind it's far lower than the sorts of amounts routinely added by salt believers. Whilst I don't agree with the salt believers, the fact that their fish don't routinely die of salt poisoning has to be borne in mind when assessing the possible damage done by salt. The damage done by nitrite is well attested.

 

[ct-death]

Bear in mind that many lfss have never heard of fishless cycling; most look at you as if you've come down from the moon when you mention it

Truer words have rarely been spoken!!! Sad, but true.

Also, thank you for clarifying your posts, for me anyways. I guess it just comes down to a matter of "need", and how we define it, and the desire to educate and steer people in the right direction. Is it necessary, I would say no, pointing to the other sucessful solutions we advocate, which I think also places others down a path of long-term sucess; but for reasons you have mentioned I presume you would say yes.

I know personally the affects that Ammonia/NitrItes have on say the life-expectancy of tropical fish used in a Fish-Cycle (it's devastating as I have seen most fish not even survive a 1/3 of their expected life). Bettas in bowl are another prime example...

I would be curious if anyone has looked at the affects of this phenomena utilizing salt (and no I am not advocating this experiment!)

 

[KarlTh]

Truer words have rarely been spoken!!! Sad, but true.

Also, thank you for clarifying your posts, for me anyways. I guess it just comes down to a matter of "need", and how we define it, and the desire to educate and steer people in the right direction. Is it necessary, I would say no, pointing to the other sucessful solutions we advocate, which I think also places others down a path of long-term sucess; but for reasons you have mentioned I presume you would say yes.

I know personally the affects that Ammonia/NitrItes have on say the life-expectancy of tropical fish used in a Fish-Cycle (it's devastating as I have seen most fish not even survive a 1/3 of their expected life). Bettas in bowl are another prime example...

I would be curious if anyone has looked at the affects of this phenomena utilizing salt (and no I am not advocating this experiment!)

Necessary, no. A valid option, yes. Naturally we want to avoid people falling into holes in the future, but the first thing is to pull them out of the hole they're in.

Certainly the level of nitrite concentration in the tissues in the presence of elevated chloride has been studied, and there's no doubt that elevated chloride does reduce nitrite uptake. Indeed, I discovered when researching the links I posted earlier that some fish don't take up chloride through their gills - these are fish which have adapted to waters which may contain nitrites, and by not using the chloride pathway they avoid taking in nitrite as well. But I digress. What has not been studied is whether very low levels of salt used for a short period (to combat nitrite) have an effect on lifespan. It may depend on the fish; very sensitive softwater species such as Apistos are probably more likely to be adversely affected than fish like Poeciliids which come from naturally high TDS - and on occasion saline - waters anyway. But then again one would not expect to find the sensitive low TDS fish in the sort of newbies' cycling tanks under consideration here.

 

[Rbishop]

That's why a water change is all you need...

 

[KarlTh]

That's why a water change is all you need...

I have helped people in the past who have done an 80% water change before bed, and by morning the nitrite is back to 1ppm. Water changes are not "all you need" in those situations. What they really needed to do was take back 90% of the fish they'd been unwisely sold by the shop, but the shop had a "no returns" policy and wouldn't budge. Elevated chloride levels saved those fish.

 

[caitylee]

Wow, very compelling arguments on both sides of this fence. I am a newbie and I will admit I am in the mits of a fish cycle on my 65 gallon tank. My daughter won some goldfish at the fair and we were given bad advice from Petco ... we bought three more goldfish and two albino cory cats. I now have a very good lfs that I bought my tank from that is helping us through our cycle. Haven't used salt just frequent water changes but the goldfish are doing surprisingly well.