juvies intolerant of salt?

[m1nh0h]

do juvies have less tolerance to salt? or is using salt for juvies and 4inch+ discus the same?

[Hsunami]

i would think its the same. Since either way fish have scales. its the scaleless ones that you have to worrie about. Like pleco, cories and loaches.

[ericatdallas]

Why are you adding salt?

[Melissa]

I've used salt with small small fry before with no adverse reactions to it....

[m1nh0h]

just curious... thinking if i should use it as a precautionary measure, more to prevent things juss incase

[Hsunami]

i have used it for new fish for stress . I used 1 teaspoon per 10 gallon.

[strawberryblonde]

I used it during a mini-cycle, 1 tsp per 10 gallon so that the nitrite ions wouldn't bind as they passed the discus gills, but other than for direct treatment of a problem I can't think of any reason to treat with salt all the time.

[ericatdallas]

I'm not saying salt can't be useful for some things, but let's put it in perspective...

1 teaspoon of NaCl in 1 gallon of water equals 3000 ppm. So 1 teaspoon per 10 gallons equals 300ppm.

I'm looking at Amazon River data right now and it ranges from negligible (either zero or not measurable by instruments) to 400 uM. Assuming I'm doing my math right, someone might double check, that's about 22 ppm in the most saline part of the Amazon River with many parts of the river having much less salt.

So if you add any salt, don't add any more than 1 teaspoon per 100 gallons...

I know there's debate about salt and people will believe what they want to believe, but I would think that doing anything over what is in their natural environment would not be helpful and may be detrimental (osmoregulation).

That being said, I think a lot of people use salt with their Discus and freshwater aquariums in general. In fact, until I started thinking about the numbers, I used to put 1 tablespoon per 20G too ...

[ericatdallas]

sort of a correction... doesn't change the above post...

I misread the -999 in the data field as not measurable. It's actually not available. So the lowest concentration for available data is 3-4ppm.

[ericatdallas]

Here's the reference for the data above:

ftp://daac.ornl.gov/data/lba/surf_hydro_and_water_chem/CAMREX/

I also found another article, didn't read it all, but it shows a range of 2-5ppm.

http://www.biology.ufl.edu/COURSES/pcb5356/2010Spring/Kitajima/SalatiVose84.pdf

I think both sources pretty much show the same thing, there's not a lot of salt in the Amazon River.

[Darrell Ward]

I never use salt on any discus. I see no need.

[strawberryblonde]

From everything I've read that's very true Darrell. Salt isn't necessary on a daily basis. It is useful for various treatments and a VERY small concentration of salt in the tank is great for a nitrite spike. Other than that, no need to to salt your fish unless it's battered and deep fried.

[m1nh0h]

i wanted to post this in here, cuz i havent gotten a reply in the disease section, my red melon seems like it has internal bleeding in its nostrils is this from some kind disease?