is regular household salt dangerous to invertebrates?

[thebullit]

i have had no problems with day to day table salt.
heres what i done.

46 teaspoons of salt added to a 3gallon bucket of water from the same tanks, slowly turned the temp up to 84 from 76 over 3 days. i started to add the treated bucket slowly over a period of 4 days. i left the tank untouched for about a week to 10 days. all ich gone then done done a 50% water change and slowly turning the temp done to 76 again over 3 days alls good no loses in fish, snails or shrimp.

 

[pixl8r]

Make sure that you keep your temps at ~85 degrees for at least four to five days. That will prevent another outbreak by killing the next generation of ich, after they hatch and become free floaters (before they attach to an animal).

 

[wataugachicken]

its can harm any type of aquatic life... fish or invertebreate.. because most table salt is treated with decaking agents among other things,sometimes you my get lucky and dump in some that doesnt have these aditives.. but is it worth the risk?? i carton a aquatic ( "freshwater" ) salt is like 5 bucks and treats over 100 gallons of water

id do a 25% water change at end of treatment,i do this with any disease. and after that regular water changes will remove the rest

hope this helps,

cory

do you have any actual facts for this or just what you've heard? (maybe at your LFS).

it would take 3-5 grams of anti-caking agent (sodium aluminosilicate) per LITER of water before it would kill your fish. i'd imagine you would have to use pounds and pounds of table salt before you reached that level. i'm really not even sure you'd have any water left at that point, just salt paste. not only that, but it's not even soluble in water. it just falls down to the bottom of the tank and sits there.

 

[o0viet0o1]

i see, ive been keeping it about 84 degrees, but i will amp it up to 85. the thing is that at night, my tank lowers by about 2 degrees, so its actually 82 instead of 84. will this still kill the ich? and 85-86 degrees is that even safe for my invertebrates? such as cherry shrimps and ghost shrimps.

 

[thebullit]

a temp drop would be fine if is only by 2 degrees, would be more natural for them as the temp drops at night for us to. it will still speed up the life cycle of the ich. the temp yoou say 85-86 will be fine for inverts for a short period as it to shortens there life span.

 

[Bobnova]

I agree, a 2 degree temp drop at night is not a problem.

The ich will live slightly longer (probably by a good ten or fifteen minutes ), but not enough to make much of a difference.
The temp doesn't kill the ich, you could do the ich treatment at 60*f if you wanted to (and the other inhabitants could take it, obviously), it'd just take longer for the salt to kill it all.

So yeah, not a problem at all.