Use Of Table Salt!

so, salt.

other than brown blood caused by nitrites what would be the purpose of even using salt?

and before saying it kills ich, check out the "scientific" method studies performed to determine its efficacy. anecdotal is nice. but, often times anecdotal flies in the face of scientific realities--making one think it was coincidental. a true salt method to cure ich is a pretty tough regime to lay on a fish. the ppms required for the baths are pretty high.


ok, i buy into relief of osmo regulatory distress--only if you define it and provide examples.

why wouldnt a hobbyist take advantage of much more effective approaches (ie., OTC meds) to disease resolution?

and, i am one of those guys online that has been suggesting use of table salt dor many years.
 
Sully, it does cure ich(experience, thanx dave) and with less stress than the OTC mesd you find. I am unsure of the "salt bath" you speak of in curing ich. read daveedkas article on it, the concentration is arround .5% at the highest dosage.
 
and before saying it kills ich, check out the "scientific" method studies performed to determine its efficacy. anecdotal is nice. but, often times anecdotal flies in the face of scientific realities--making one think it was coincidental. a true salt method to cure ich is a pretty tough regime to lay on a fish. the ppms required for the baths are pretty high.
Click to expand...

To my knowledge no one has ever found a strain of freshwater ich that can survive salt above 5 ppt. Rough calcutalions put 3 teaspoons per gallon at just over 6 ppt (rough because there are variables in purity as well as actual weight when using common salt measured volumetrically). Most strains of freshwater ich cannot survive salt any where near that level. With that in mind, 2 teaspoons per gallon will suffice for all but the most resilient strains of ich, and if proper treatment guidelines are followed, one will know if and when an increase is needed without a lot of extra stress on their fish.

Salt treatment for ich should not be confused with the practice of salt dips. Ich cannot be treated by anything (non-fatal to the fish) while it is encysted on the fish. Salt and meds both kill the ich when it enters the freeswimming stage of it's lifecycle. The meds you are so quick to reccomend come with a huge set of variables, and cannot be used fulll dose on many fish in the hobby because of the stress and damage they create. In reality there are very few fish that can tolerate full dosage of meds for the length of time it takes to properly ensure that all ich is dead. The additional difficulties in knowing what dosage levels truly are, how effective that dosage remains for how long and so on simply make the use of meds less than desireable.

For a parasite that actually is killed by salt, there is no logical reason to use meds.

I will be the first to say Salt is not a magic cure all for the aquarium hobby, and it is highly abused by a lot of mis-informed people. But for killing ich it is an excellent option that is highly effective.
If you have any study or information that shows Freshwater ich surviving specified salt levels through the freeswimming stage please share.
Dave
 
Last edited:
To return to the original topic, though, most table salts do not use YPS as an anti-caking agent, calcium silicate is cheaper. Besides, the concentration of anti-caking agent present in table salt is on the order of 0.1%, consider this when making adding it to your tank to approximately 0.1% concentration, the result is that there is approximately 1 ppm of anti-caking agent in your water.

More importantly though, most aquarists do not keep their tanks outdoors where UV fluxes are relatively high - or at least present. Ever wonder why you can't get a tan through your window? UV light doesn't pass through glass very efficiently. Pond owners are somewhat leery of YPS; however, ponds owners genrally don't buy table salt because it's too expensive, they prefer the bulk ice salt or NaCl water softeners because of the quantities used - on the order of pounds.

Iodide is a complete non-issue. It's required by all vertebrates for proper metabolism, hence its presence in table salt. It's neither an antiseptic nor a poison, and again usually only a few percent of table salt is potassium iodide.

Table salt is recommended over aquarium salt on these boards because folks around here, such as RTR, Daveedka, OG, etc. refuse to let foolish myths be propagated and instead rely on science (is it a dirty word or something?) to guide their advice. Empirical (i.e. experience) evidence is misleading without science to back it up, namely because most aquarist are confined to the macroscopic (what they can see with their eyes). Without a deeper knowledge of chemistry and microbiology one never knows if what is observed on a macroscopic scale is coincidence or something noteworthy.

The anti-table salt myth, like the rest of the myths we at AC work so hard to dispell, fails to stand up to rigorous analysis of the pseudo-science supporting it.
 
Last edited:
From the FDA website: http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scrip...RPart=172&showFR=1&subpartNode=21:3.0.1.1.3.5
FDA re: YPS said:
(b) The additive is used or intended for use as an anticaking agent in salt and as an adjuvant in the production of dendritic crystals of salt in an amount needed to produce its intended effect but not in excess of 13 parts per million calculated as anhydrous sodium ferrocyanide.
Click to expand...

So if YPS is used as an anti-caking agent, the amount of YPS in an aquarium treated with salt containing YPS would be no greater than 13 ppb (parts per billion)

The maximum allowable concentration - by EPA regs - in streams is 2 ppm based on fish toxicity. While toxic exposure levels vary greatly from species to species, if one has faith in the EPA, 2 ppm should be the maximum safe level for the most fragile species. Now if we make the leap from temperate species to tropical species and assume the same limit, we see that the amounts in our aquaria would be less than 20 times lower than the maximum allowable limit.
 
Last edited:
:bowing: :bowing: HappyChem
If I have to pick who to believe...100% of the time it will be RTR, Daveedka, HappyChem...Plantbrain...Greg Watson...a few others.

Just because bad info has been perpetuated across the internet does not make it fact. :pc:
 
nursie said:
:bowing: :bowing: HappyChem
If I have to pick who to believe...100% of the time it will be RTR, Daveedka, HappyChem...Plantbrain...Greg Watson...a few others.

Just because bad info has been perpetuated across the internet does not make it fact. :pc:
Click to expand...
AMEN to that!

Roan
 
I don't know any science, but I do know that I've used plain old table salt out of my shaker for over a week to treat a disease I could not pinpoint with no adverse effects...unless you count living fish an adverse effect. :thm:
 
I am a long time lurker--a rare oster. I spend most of my time on other boards. I am not trying to raise a stink or question anyones expertise. And, i really hate to argue--lol. Much prefer to get in and out when posting. Salt, temp, and ich is a topic that always catches my eye.

Daveedka, USDA Pub. 476. Robert Durborrow, Andrew Mitchell and David Crosby authoring. They do suggest that salt can be very effective--and i do not disagree. They did, however, first note 7 years ago that ich was withstanding 5ppt NaCl.

And, as we all know basic biology the organisms ability to withstand increasing levels of NaCl is increased by continued exposure.

To then climb past the 5ppt to be able to successful attack ich with NaCl will introduce additional (and often times significant) stress for the softer water, lower TDS fish. Many of whom will be in the population of fish being treated with this method by "newer" hobbyists.

And, unfortunately the population will include many very young juveniles. The fish most often purchased at the lfs. The fish most often infected with the protozoan. Ich and high levels of salt with a younger, weakened, salt sensitive fish is not something I often risked.

Concurrent with most advice to utilize salt is the advice to increase temps. Once again i am not argueing the efficacy of this method properly managed with older, more mature specimens. What does cause me concern is that once again we come back to the issue of what type of hobbyist is requesting help and advice on boards like this--and what type of fish do they possess. Most often it is the newer hobbyist looking for advice from the "seasoned" keepers out there. Most often it is a disease that is encountered when purchasing fish from the lfs. Most of my experience trying to help newer hobbyists points me to the thought that the fish are juveniles--coming into their tanks after a tough and stressful trip from the fish farms, through the wholesale and retail distribution chain, and finally into their tank. Weak fish in a diseased state. my goal is always to cure as quickly as possible. Without adding a significant stress factor through salt compounded by temps.

A young or juvenile fish has a smaller body mass. so an outbreak of ich will damage them (most likely) more significantly than it will an older fish. A greater % of their surface area will be affected.

As the ich parasite moves through the stages of life and falls from the body of the fish to the substrate it leaves a wound. a suppurating wound. a wound oozing fluids--and more importantly salt. The osmo regulatory process is challenged at this point. You can increase salt level to ease the imbalance--but then you slow the elimination of waste and the uptake of water. It permits a build-up of toxins in the body of the fish--further compounding the compromised immune response.

When we have so much evidence that chemical formulations work more effectively than salt--albeit for a nominally higher price i just question why we would wnat to use salt. Not saying do not use it. just suggesting that I would not with young fish. especially softwater and/or low TDS fish. Especially since evidence over the past 7 years has indicated that the tolerance to salt by Ichthyophthirius multifiliis is increasing--maybe too many hobbyists just use salt as a magic elixir in their tanks on a daily basis and we have created our own monsters

Personal i guess. Certainly not an attack on anyones views.
 
Sorry, but I have not yet seen current work reported in the peer-reviewed literature which holds proprietary aquarium preparations to be more effective than salt and heat. Could you share those references with us?

I do not believe that any of the salt-and-heat group on this forum has ever advocated salt on a daily/chronic basis, but rather quite the opposite by all strongly discouraging the chronic use of salt in FW tanks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom