Nitrites!!! Help!

[Coler]

I was responding to CK telling me I was wrong to say that chloride prevents uptake of nitrite. It does.

As to ammonia, I enjoy splitting the odd hair

I'm with you on all that Karl - the advice on salt is particularly worth noting I think, as an emergency room option until you can do a water change (yes ideally it would be done immediately but especially with bigger tanks and their interaction with life that's not always possible - I would say in a 10G a water change can be done so quickly as to be relatively instantaneous).

A question for my own education - I understood that the effect of nitrite poisoning was to prevent the fish from being able to metabolise oxygen at the gill surface and that addition of salt mitigated against this (i.e. it is not so much that nitrite in itself is toxic, but that it interferes severely with the bio-chemical function of respiration in fish). Is it in fact the case that adding the salt in fact prevents a toxic substance (the nitrite) from being 'ingested' for want of a better word ?

Thanks as always for your info

 

[KarlTh]

Nitrite binds with haemoglobin to create methaemoglobin. This latter is unable to take on oxygen, suffocating the fish - it also turns the blood a brown colour, hence "brown blood disease". Most toxins do something like this - prevent the operation of a vital metabolic pathway in some manner. The effect of the salt - specifically the chloride - is to compete with the nitrite so that it isn't taken in through the gills, so yes, it does prevent uptake of the toxin.

 

[mel_20_20]

Thanks Karl, I like to understand the physiological and pathological processes in animals, and humans.:read:

You are a storehouse of knowledge.
What is your background, if it's not impolite to ask?