How to properly treat aquarium fish with salt

When symptoms of illness appear in your aquarium fish, it can be quite concerning. Selecting the best course of action can be difficult, but you want to aid in their speedy recovery. Salt is one of the easiest and most powerful remedies you can use, and you probably already have it at home.

Treating fish with salt is a gentle and natural way to treat common ailments. It’s a popular choice among aquarium enthusiasts because it’s inexpensive and doesn’t require special chemicals. However, it must be applied properly to protect your fish’s health and safety, just like any other treatment.

We’ll walk you through the process of applying salt to your aquarium fish in this post, making sure you do it correctly. This method might be exactly what your fish need to get back to being their lively selves, whether you’re dealing with minor injuries, parasites, or other issues.

What diseases can be treated with salt

When fish are stressed, salt helps their bodies by promoting wound healing and better blood flow. Furthermore, raising the salinity of the water makes the environment unsuitable for the growth of different bacteria and parasites. The aquatic environment can be treated with salt to treat the following fish diseases:

• ichthyophthirius;
• saprolegniosis;
• chilodonellosis;
• trichodinosis;
• tetrahymenosis;
• oodiniasis;
• apiosomiasis;
• gyrodactylosis;
• dactylogyrosis;
• columnariasis;
• branchiomycosis;
• costiasis;
• diplozoonosis;
• pleistophorosis.

Salt is a common cure because it works well against the pathogens that cause many diseases. It can be applied even in the absence of a definitive diagnosis. Fish should be treated with salt if they exhibit any of the following symptoms:

• itching;
• appearance of white plaque or mucus on the body and fins;
• difficulty breathing;
• gluing of fins.

How to use salt correctly

Rock salt or non-iodized table salt, preferably coarsely ground, is used to treat fish. Using sea salt is acceptable here. It is crucial that there be no additives in the product.

2 days before the start of treating aquarium fish with salt, the water temperature in the general aquarium is increased to 27-31 ° C, and aeration is increased. The dosage of the substance is 1-1.5 hours. l. per 10 l of water. For disease prevention, use a solution with a concentration of 1-2 g / l, and when treating severe fungal and bacterial infections, add salt to the aquarium at a dose of 10 g / l. The substance is added to the tank gradually, increasing the concentration by 0.1% every 4-6 hours. During the treatment, filtration is not turned off, and water changes are performed as usual. If the concentration needs to be maintained, an appropriate amount of the product is added to the water with each change. The course of treatment is 10-30 days.

Add table salt to the water when fish are poisoned by nitrites because it lessens their toxicity. The environment’s salinity shouldn’t be higher than 100–500 mg/l. Even delicate fish species are unaffected by this salinity.

Salt baths

Fish can be salted by bathing them in salt. A saline solution containing 2-2.5% is appropriate for most species. One tablespoon should be prepared for every ten liters of water. Make a solution with a lower concentration (1.7–1.7%) for fry and weak fish. Only settled water is used for treatment. You have to agitate the crystals until they dissolve entirely.

Use a separate tank with a capacity of 3–10 liters and moderate aeration for baths. Its water should have the same pH difference of no more than 0.3 and the same temperature as the general aquarium—a difference of no more than 2 °C is acceptable. For ten to twenty minutes, the fish are submerged in the bath. Pets are kept under observation throughout the process. Bathing should be discontinued if they start to feel anxious, float on their side on the surface, are unable to sink, breathe heavily, or develop mucus on their body or gills.

Fish from the breeding tank should not be moved straight into the main aquarium. You should get ready another vessel with a product concentration of 5 g/l (0.5%). The fish are put in this tank after taking a bath to help them get rid of any leftover parasites and acclimate to less salinity in the water.

Salt baths should be done at least twice or thrice (or ten times in extreme circumstances) with a one- to two-day break in between. Long-term baths are also possible. Larger tanks, or quarantine aquariums, and solutions containing more than 1.5 g/l are utilized for them. They are used to store fish for a few days to two weeks. A solution containing the same amount of the material as the aquarium is used to change the water. The salinity is progressively lowered after the symptoms go away, with fresh water replacing 10% to 15% of the volume every day.

Contraindications

Certain fish species cannot survive in environments that are more salinized than others. Among them are:

• various catfish (corydoras, thoracatum, pterygoplichthys, ancistrus, etc.);
• Sumatran barbs;
• calamoichthys;
• young labyrinth fish.

When these species are present, exercise caution when treating aquarium fish with salt. Sick people should be kept in a different tank or should only be used at low concentrations (no more than 1.5%). Raising the salt level in aquariums containing a lot of live plants is not advised. Additionally, since nitrates become more toxic in a salty environment, salt shouldn’t be added to water that has a high nitrate content.

Treating aquarium fish with salt can be a useful and all-natural solution for a number of health problems. To ensure that your fish benefit without suffering harm, it’s critical to know the appropriate concentration and method for your particular situation.

Throughout treatment, keep a close eye on your fish and adjust as necessary. Reduce the salt concentration or stop the treatment completely if any distress signals show up.

Keep in mind that not all fish species can tolerate salt, so before beginning any treatment, knowledge and research are essential. Salt can be an important tool for keeping the fish in your aquarium healthy if it is applied carefully.

While treating aquarium fish with salt can be a natural and effective way to treat some illnesses, it’s important to know how much to use and how to apply it correctly to prevent damage to your fish. You can create a safer environment for your fish to recover from common problems like parasites, infections, and stress by knowing when and how to use salt treatments.

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