# salt bath question (kind of an emergency)



## americanthighs (Feb 16, 2011)

So, I'm treating my guys with a salt bath for an unknown fungus. Gregory Skomal's "Your Happy Healthy Pet: Freshwater Aquarium" states that an ideal salt treatment is:

1 tsp of noniodized salt per gallon of water (my QT is 10 gal - so 10 tsp of salt), twice a day for 3-4 days, and if no improvement is noticed then add 1 tsp a day with progressive water changes.

This amount of salt in a 10 gal aquarium alarms me a bit. 

I've had these fish for a little over a year and I'm pretty proud of the fact that I've been able to keep them this long with little to no problems outside of ich they developed after I brought them home until the last 3 months. I've tried tetracycline and maroxy - both to no avail. The tetracycline was bought because I thought they had fin rot at first, this was in December. Everything was fine until a week and a half ago, when my black moor started to look like someone threw a handful of baby powder on him and started acting sluggish. I tried maroxy, and it did nothing. Coppersafe is more for parasites, and if I'm understanding everything I've read (which has been A LOT...), it's not a parasite. I'm thinking more along the lines of a true fungus.

Skomal suggests that the salt treatment is a "time-tested cure-all," but I think that amount of salt seems like a bit much. I'm just curious if any of you have used this method and what you did to achieve success.

Thanks. :fish5:


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## Gizmo (Dec 6, 2010)

americanthighs said:


> Skomal suggests that the salt treatment is a "time-tested cure-all," but I think that amount of salt seems like a bit much. I'm just curious if any of you have used this method and what you did to achieve success.


I've never heard of using common salt in an aquarium, but I do know that most healthy freshwater fish can tolerate a very high salt content. Just be careful, and if possible seek a second opinion on using table salt. With that being said, API sells aquarium-specific salt with exact dosing suggestions, which is what I'm using currently for a case of ich.


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## americanthighs (Feb 16, 2011)

[email protected] said:


> I've never heard of using common salt in an aquarium, but I do know that most healthy freshwater fish can tolerate a very high salt content. Just be careful, and if possible seek a second opinion on using table salt. With that being said, API sells aquarium-specific salt with exact dosing suggestions, which is what I'm using currently for a case of ich.



According to the book, as long as it's noniodized it should be all good. It has calcium silicate in it tho, which I just noticed. Hrmph... i'll cut it back to half of what he suggests and only for 3 days. I'm going to raise the temperature a bit and black out the tank while i'm at school tomorrow (fungus doesn't like heat and darkness, apparently) - when I come back, we'll see how they're doin.


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## majerah1 (Oct 29, 2010)

You can use sea salt and even epsom salt,but not table salt.depending on the type of fish my way of treating ich is a raise in temp,and fin rot,is from poor water.The best cure for that is good clean fresh waterchanges daily for a week.

The API salt mentioned above is the best type to use,and many fish can tolerate it.Its usually a dose of a teaspoon to five gallons.(If i recall) But for now,if you have been medicating for awhile,I suggest you do a large waterchange,and give the meds a break.You can over medicate,and sometimes the best cure is fresh clean water as opposed to chemicals.


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## americanthighs (Feb 16, 2011)

majerah1 said:


> You can use sea salt and even epsom salt,but not table salt.depending on the type of fish my way of treating ich is a raise in temp,and fin rot,is from poor water.The best cure for that is good clean fresh waterchanges daily for a week.
> 
> The API salt mentioned above is the best type to use,and many fish can tolerate it.Its usually a dose of a teaspoon to five gallons.(If i recall) But for now,if you have been medicating for awhile,I suggest you do a large waterchange,and give the meds a break.You can over medicate,and sometimes the best cure is fresh clean water as opposed to chemicals.



I have sea salt, score! Today was the first day I started the salt treatment. I gave them a course of maroxy over the last couple of days and it really didn't do much, so I figured i'd give the simplest cure a try. They seem fine now - they've been in there for about 5 hours, eating, swimmin and bein fishy in general... I'll add one teaspoon of sea salt tomorrow instead of the 10 tsp (wth? i knew that sounded like a lot...), so it's a little more gentle. Thanks!


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