How often should i put aquarium salt in my guppy tank?
by Aquaboy on Sunday, May 23rd, 2010 | 5 Comments
I know you don’t NEED salt but i put a tablespoon in my 5 gallon with 2 guppies in it and the guppies seem happier and are swimming around more and the tank looks cleaner.
Just wondering when i should add another tablespoon??
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Guppies don’t really need and often don’t like salt. I’ve owned and bred fancy tail guppies for 3 years. Don’t overdue it no matter what. It could kill all your fish. Just follow the directions on the box and you should be fine. Good luck!
Aquarium salt doesn’t evaporate so when you’re just adding water don’t bother or you will throw your fish off i read 1 teaspoon for every gallon or 1 tablespoon for every 5, so if you decide to add more add it when you do your water change.
If you are going to add salt then you add it to each bucket of new water you add to the tank when you do water changes.
Salt only leaves the tank when you remove the water, if you just keep adding it the level of salt keeps going up.
If you are topping up for evaporation then dont add any more salt.
Ian
Hello Jessica I have 7 years experance with guppies.It is true they do not have to have salt,but it can only do them good and not harm.Once you put salt in a tank it stays there and does not leave with water when it evaporates.You should do a 20 percent water change atleast every other week,just add back the salt that is taken out with the old water.So lets see if you take out 2 1/2 gallons that is half ,add back 1/2 tablespoon of salt,1 1/4 gallons ,1/4 tablespoon.
But you do not have to be that exact.I read in a TROPICAL FISH MAGAZINE that guppies are raised in salt water that is close to ocean water strinth in salt level.
I would never use “aquarium salt” for anything. It’s a repackaged low grade of salt, not something made for aquariums or even for use in foods or animal feed. If I win some in a fish club meeting raffle, I throw it in the trash. I would not even re-donate it. I worked for years in a salt mine and I know what contaminants and additives are in that grade of salt. If my driveway were longer, I might use it at the far end but I don’t want any “aquarium salt” tracked in my house.
If you do want to add salt to your aquarium use iodized table salt. That is the cleanest purest salt you can buy for a reasonable price without buying a reagent or lab grade that would set you back some serious bucks. If the fish are secondary freshwater fish, meaning they have descended from a marine fish back some time in their history, I’d use a marine mix like Instant Ocean or Reef Crystals which would also add minerals and buffer the pH upwards.
It is surely coincidence that your guppies look happier and the tank looks cleaner after adding a tablespoon of salt to five gallons of water. You are only at about 2 or 3% of the salinity of sea water. That should have no discernable effect. The thing to remember about adding more is the salt does not leave. Water evaporates, but salt does not. If you add more salt when you top off the tank, you may end up with 2, 3, 4, or over months, a dozen tablespoons of salt still in the aquarium.
Before adding more salt, get a hydrometer that measures brackish and salt water. Decide what salinity you want in your aquarium and target that.
BTW, it is always best to dissolve the salt into the water change water rather than adding it dry to the tank, or putting it in the water mixing bucket first then adding water. Always add the salt to the water, not vice versa because of irreversible chemical reactions that can occur at high salinity when there are more than one kind of salt present. Sodium chloride is only one of the many compounds that are all salts.