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Salting

I am pretty sure I have a parasite or disease in my tank, Looks like Ick. White stuff on a dead fish, more on one of the goldfish, looks like the fin might be eaten away or something?
So, can someone please give me exact instructions how to properly salt my system?

How much salt? ( I have a 100 gallon tank with a sump) and please explain how I figure out PPT if that is the measurement. I have no idea how to salt to that level.

Do I do with the system operating as normal or will it hurt the plants?

Anything else I might need to know about?

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Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Ihara on August 8, 2013 at 9:41pm

mike,

I would advise getting a more positive ID on the problem before presuming that salting is the right way to address it. Ich is treatable (I'm told) by elevating salt content and temperature. The ich parasite also requires fin fish as a host, and in the absence of suitable hosts, it will die out over 7 or more days, depending on temperature.

I went through an episode of ich earlier this year, and I opted to kill all the fin fish, clean the tank (the growbeds continued to have water circulating with the sump alone, which had a few crayfish it it). After waiting a full month (just to be sure), I restocked with new fish (catfish). No problems since. I know that the source of my infection was some channel cat fingerlings I bought from a certain seller (Alpine fisheries in San Diego county). I just won't buy from them again.

The concentrations of salt required for ich treatment was something crazy like 3-4 ppt, which is really pretty salty. I didn't want that in my yard. Apparently most plants can handle it, but I can't confirm this.

Good Luck.

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Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Ihara on August 8, 2013 at 9:49pm

Oh, and if you decide to go ahead with the salt treatment, the easiest thing to do is to convert your water volume into liters. 100 gallons (and you'll have to do this for the total volume of the system, not just your fish tank) is 378.5 liters. multiply the number of liters by 3 (ppt) for the number of grams of salt you need to add. 378.5 x 3 = 1135.5 grams of salt. That would be almost exactly 2.5 lb. of salt per 100 gallons of water.