chemists will define a salt as a compound in which metal atoms (or electro positive radicals e.g such as sodium) replace one or more of the replaceable hydrogen atoms of an acid. the term "salt" can mean many things ranging from simply table salt (sodium chloride) to marine salt to potassium carbonate to magnesium chloride to ... well you get the idea. there are many different 'salts' and the term is used all too loosely.
adding 'salt' is not the same as adding trace elements. here's a 'chart' of the elements found in the great Rift Lakes. if you're trying to duplicate the elemental chemistry of one of these lakes, adding 'salt' does nothing but add a great deal of one of the elements and none of the others creating a significant chemical imbalance.
moreover, it's important to remember that the vast majority of Malawi cichids are not wild caught these days. they're farmed in ponds in florida using local water which is not a duplicate of that chemistry found in Africa. these fish are generationally removed from the water chemistry found in Lake Malawi and your attempts to duplicate it are ill founded. simply having hard, alkaline water is just fine with these fish.
if you have 'soft' water and want to make it hard, adding 'salt' as sodium chloride, does absolutely nothing for you with regard to the elements which your test kits alert you to. unfortunately, while the test kit you're using measures only the presence of Ca and Mg, there may be many more cationic species in your water than you're able to test for. Sodium, Potassium, Titanium, Nickel, Aluminium, Manganese, Copper, Tin are a few you may have heard of. the sum total of all of them would be your total dissolved solids (TDS) and it is THIS function that has the most significant impact on fish ... much more so than Ca and Mg alone.
these cations are attached to anion species such as carbonate but may also be silicate, phosphate, sulphate, chloride and others. again, while you're measuring carbonate as KH there are other disolved inorganic compounds in your water that you're not testing for.
http://malawicichlids.com/mw01011.htm
adding 'salt' is not the same as adding trace elements. here's a 'chart' of the elements found in the great Rift Lakes. if you're trying to duplicate the elemental chemistry of one of these lakes, adding 'salt' does nothing but add a great deal of one of the elements and none of the others creating a significant chemical imbalance.
moreover, it's important to remember that the vast majority of Malawi cichids are not wild caught these days. they're farmed in ponds in florida using local water which is not a duplicate of that chemistry found in Africa. these fish are generationally removed from the water chemistry found in Lake Malawi and your attempts to duplicate it are ill founded. simply having hard, alkaline water is just fine with these fish.
if you have 'soft' water and want to make it hard, adding 'salt' as sodium chloride, does absolutely nothing for you with regard to the elements which your test kits alert you to. unfortunately, while the test kit you're using measures only the presence of Ca and Mg, there may be many more cationic species in your water than you're able to test for. Sodium, Potassium, Titanium, Nickel, Aluminium, Manganese, Copper, Tin are a few you may have heard of. the sum total of all of them would be your total dissolved solids (TDS) and it is THIS function that has the most significant impact on fish ... much more so than Ca and Mg alone.
these cations are attached to anion species such as carbonate but may also be silicate, phosphate, sulphate, chloride and others. again, while you're measuring carbonate as KH there are other disolved inorganic compounds in your water that you're not testing for.
http://malawicichlids.com/mw01011.htm
