Hw much aquarium salt we should use per gallon? Does aquarium salt hurt live plants?
by Aquaboy on Friday, February 19th, 2010 | 3 Comments
We have freshwater 75 gallon aquarium with 2 brown knifes, 1 ghost knife, 3 Bala Sharks, 3 congo tetras, 1 rainbow, 4 small chiclids, 2 clown somethings, 1 albino frog and 3 fish i don’t know what they are. We came home tonight and the light was off in our tank the fish were all gathered at the bottom. We turned on the light and it appeared that the fish were twitching. one of the tetras was laying on the bottom of the tank, he eventually got up and all the fish are now swimming around normally a few twitches here and there but over all ok. Were they just waking up or out they sick??
they are just waking up. and its one tabel spoon per 5 gallons.
First of all, your fish were sleeping with the lights off. They started waking up when you turned on the light. All of this is normal.
None of the fish you have need salt in their water (except maybe the “clown somethings” and the “I don’t know what they are,” but chances are they don’t need salt, either), and some of them (particularly the congo tetras) will be harmed by salt.
And yes, salt will also harm or kill most freshwater aquarium plants.
So if I were you, I wouldn’t put salt in that tank at all.
Some of your animals will outgrow that 75-gallon tank fairly soon. The Bala Sharks will grow to be about a foot long, the black ghost knife fish (I’m assuming that’s what you have) will reach about 20 inches, and the albino frog (assuming it’s an African Clawed Frog, which I think it is) will get to be a foot long and will eat all your smaller fish.
You don’t say (and maybe don’t know?) what species of cichlids you have, but different species could end up being anywhere from a couple of inches long to 40 inches or so.
So you should be planning either to find new homes for those fish as they get too big for your tank (which isn’t always easy), or to get one or more much larger tanks.
Needless to say, it would be a very good idea to find out what species of fish you have so you could learn the requirements for each species.
If you HAVE live plants, you shouldn’t use aquarium salt at all, because it can damage them. If live plants aren’t a problem and you want to use salt to treat their stress/sickness, you will have to use it at half the normal dose, because you have scaleless fish, including your knife fish and frog (scaleless fish can’t tolerate the normal dose of aquarium salt). This would mean using 1 tablespoon per 10 gallons in your case. Regarding all your fish at the bottom, it is unlikely that all your fish would be at the bottom just because the lights are off, especially when some are nocturnal and some are not bottom dwellers–unless something was wrong. Especially if they are twitching, if when you say twitching you mean flashing/shimmying/scraping/other erratic abnormal behavior. Your fish are probably acting this way because of any combination of stress, poor water quality, pH swings and/or ammonia present, and possibly some disease. If you want to encourage their slime coating production to help them recover and deal with stress better you could add some liquid “stress coat” producer like API SRESS COAT or something equivalent, just check the label to be sure if it says its ok for scaleless fish and plants. Then make sure you are maintaining good water quality by doing 25% water changes every week or two. Check your water parameters to see if anything is wrong, And if it turns out to be an illness or infection and you need to treat the tank with medicine, you need to dose the medicine at half dose for the scaleless fish (don’t know about the live plants), as long as its a medication that CAN be used for scaleless fish, as there are many out there that can’t be used at all because it burns their skin.
See http://www.aquaworldaquarium.com/Articles/TonyGriffitts/Adding_Salt_to_a_Freshwater_Aquarium.htm