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[font color="#000080"]Can somebody please help me?? I need to find the article on Aquarium Salt dosage. I know I've read it a million times and for some reason I can't find it now.... Please, help!

Patty [/font]

Patty - was it this one from Goldfish Paradise?

[link=http://www.goldfishparadise.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=16355]http://www.goldfishparadise.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=16355" style="COLOR: #C000C0[/link]

yep. that's it!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!

Sorry for the trouble!

Patty

Actually, we need something like that here. It is an excellent outline for using salt. I need to copy some of it myself, like the dip solution.

Diane,

Once again, I need your help.

These are my water parameters... Remember the fish I lost to poor shipping?? Anyway, you told me to keep an eye on water parameters and today this is what I got:

Ammonia = 0
pH = 7.6
Nitrate = STILL AT 0 (yellow)**
Nitrites = b/n 0 - .25 (blueish, not purple)

Why is this????? It's driving me crazy. It must be, like you said, that it is re-clycling, I suppose.... What else could be wrong? I am trying to clean the water from all the meds. I added tonight the 2nd dose of salt. The water looks "smokey" (not cloudy cloud, just a hint of smokey, know what I mean? I thought it was probably due to the meds, but since I changed about 40% of the water yesterday, I suppose this could be a bacterial bloom???). Are my fish safe??

Patty

PattyPedd attached this image:

do you see how hazy it is?? Not necessarily cloudy, but just with a hint of smoke.... ???

Patty

That's a bacterial bloom. Just keep an eye on ammonia and don't worry too much about the nitrites. The reason I say that is because you have salt in the water. Salt inhibits nitrite uptake. Watch your fish for signs of stress. Nitrites, if they are bothering the goldies, will make them pipe for air (hang at the surface gasping), or swim in bubbles or in current in ways they normally don't. But I believe the salt will get you through any nitrite phase.

Try to relax a little and don't go into a knee-jerk response with anything just yet. You may get a mini-cycle, but you should not get really high numbers because you already had stuff in the tank. I think you said you changed a filter on one of the tanks. If so, take a really juicy, seeded filter pad from any other healthy tank (one that has not recently had ich or other parasite), and squeeze & rub some of that juicy gunk onto the new filter media. That will help boost it. If you have something in one of the tanks that is nice and slimy, pull it out and rub the filter media on it - that is all good bacteria and you'll be putting it right in the filter's flow. A handful of surface gravel in the filter bag/cartridge will also help.

The reason I say to relax is that goldfish are very cycle-hardy. They are tolerant of ammonia and nitrite to pretty high numbers so just watch for outward signs of stress and do a hefty water change of 50%, WITHOUT touching the gravel or other media.

Ammonia can cause temporary physical characteristics like redness and even cloudy eyes. This will correct itself once the fish is in toxin-free water a few weeks.

Keep dosing bacterial starters of whatever kind you can get. I'm more a fan of liquid ones and Cycle, I believe, is biased towards nitrite eating bacteria .

Being that you have nitrites at all means you aren't starting over completely .

Make sense? How are they otherwise?

EDIT: I just noticed - are those live plants? They are probably consuming some of the ammonia and much of the nitrate. You may not really see nitrates until the plants can't keep up with it.

Last edited by Cory_Di at 06-Mar-2005 18:15

Yes, there are some real plants (anacharis and a sword). The others back there are from the background! LOL The fish look good, eating away. I am still feeding them Medi-Koi. Should I stop now?? I was using that because of the sick fish.

I know, I'm getting paranoid. Don't want to lose any other fish....

Thanks for all your help!!

Patty

You must go a minimum of 7 days. If any fish had a low lying infection that is corrected with the Medi-Koi it has the potential of making a disease resistant version, if you stop too soon.

I didn't realize you had live plants in the tank when I suggested the high salt solution. I'm not sure how the plants will respond.

You may want to reduce the amount of salt in there a little for the sake of the plants, if the fish are looking ok.

[font color="#000080"]Well... I figured you can always replace the plants...! Does that mean you would stop adding any more salt period, or just adding "ONLY" 10 tablespoons tomorrow??

Again, last night I added 16 tablespoons, tonight I added about 19 tablespoons and I was going to add 20 tablespoons tomorrow nite. :%)

THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR HELP!! YOU ROCK!!

Patty [/font]

Refresh my memory on the tank size you are doing this dosing. It should be predissolved too. I do it in really hot water with a drop of conditioner and I stir until it is completely dissolved. That takes a few minutes with the rock type. Then I let it sit an hour to cool. Even then, I dribble a little in throughout the day, rather than dump it all in at once.