Goldfish and Salt

Kinds of salt

Aquarium salt, rock salt, pickle salt, and solar salt. Latter provides essential minerals to the fish and comes in 20 or 40 lb back in Home improvement centers. Table salt is NOT to be used at all, it is deadly to the fish due to the anti caking agents in the salt.....

Concentrations

A low concentration of 0.1% is 1 teaspoon per gallon or 1 tablespoon per 5 gl. This low rate will not do any damage to most water plants. A medium concentration is between 0.1% and 0.5%, but personally I don't go higher than 0.3%. This rate should be obtained in 12 hour intervals, 0.1% salt for 3 times.
A high concentration is up to 0.9% is only recommended for very short treatments, like a dip or short bath, otherwise its deadly to your fish.

Salt dips

There are certain situations where you wonna expose your fish to a brief, but strong salt dip to knock off half a dozen parasites....
- bringing home a new fish from the pet store
- fish comes inside before winter from your pond into an aquarium
- flashing/scratching
- a huge amount of parasites discovered with a microscope
- persistant case of fin rot
A dipped fish will be so much more responsive to other medications added to the tank...
Exceptions: The fish is very small and weak, or you see dark bloody gills, which indicates ammonia toxicity or other kinds of toxins.

How to: Use 1/2 cup of salt from the above list per gallon of water, adjust the temperature, so the fish does not get stressed from temperature shock. Put the salt into the water. When the salt is dissolved, add the fish to the sater and start the timer. A dip between 30 seconds and 5 min is sufficient, as long as the fish does not show any signs of stress. Small fish of course do better in shorter dips. The fish should be swimming around in the bucket, and start to float on top of the water. This is a normal reaction. Just poke the fish, and continue the dip IF the fish starts to move around again. If the fish does not react to your poking, take him out immediately. For bigger fish, even if they are swimming constantly for the whole 5 min, this is the maximum, anything longer than that can kill them. If the fish, especially smaller ones, start to swim or roll around funny after being put into the dip, they need to be taken out right away, no matter how short the dip was. Then they are not able to handle the dip.

Of course, its not a good idea to put the fish back where he came from. The infected tank should be treated as well, while the dipped fish can house into some sort of hospital tank/tub.

Besides the parasite treatment, salt is also an excellent preventive for nitrite poisoning. Depending on how high your nitrite is and how long your fish has been exposed to it, a percentage of 0.1 to 0.3 is recommended to protect the fishies gill from the nitrite..... :)

Writen by RanchuGirl