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What is the amount or concentration of salt most people use to treat ich and other problems, and how long do they use it for before starting to remove it?

I've seen it referenced as both a percent of concentration and as a certain volume per gallon of water. Then someone said you should always go by weight instead because the size of the salt grain varies alot depending on type of salt used. They never say what that weight should be though. Also, there is a really big variation in what people say they use to treat ich as far as amounts per gallon:

1T/10 gallon
1T/5 gallon
1t/1 gallon
1.5t/1 gallon
5t/1 gallon

I'm now treating my tank for ich and adding salt gradually. I have it up to about 12T of aquarium salt in about 50 gallons of water so far. I had planned to add enough to get up to the 1.5t/1 US gallon ratio which would be another 13T. Is this correct? With all the variation in doses people say they use I wonder if alot of people either confuse tablespoons(T) and teaspoons(t), or just simpy make a typo with the shift key. I don't want to kill my fish because of a typo, so I just wanted to double check before I added much more salt.

If you convert tablespoons to teaspoons and put it all into per 1g of water you get:
1T/10g= 3t/1g
1T/5g = 1.5t/1g

so you have people using between 5 and 1 teaspoon per gallon of water. The reason there's a variation is because it depends on what fish you have in the tank. Some will survive near brackish conditions and some barely tolerate any salt. Also plants are the same way so you have to take that into consideration. I don't see how size of the grain matters. Whether I use chunks of rock salt or fine grained table salt so long as I measure correctly I will have the same amount.
It has been proven a few times on a snail board, where most meds would kill the inhabitants, that 1.5t/1g will kill free swimming ich. To reach that level 25tablespoons is correct. I think to get rid of ich though it is more important to stay on top of water quality, keep a consistent environment(no temp or ph changes), and do lots of water changes/gravel vacs to suck out the parasite. Make sure if you use salt and do water changes you are adding the same ratio of salt(1.5t/1g) to the water you are adding unless you want to lower the level of salt.

MO

To confuse you more
US 1Ts = 3ts
UK 1Ts = 4ts

Keith

Near enough is not good enough, therefore good enough is not near enough, and only your best will do.
I VOTE DO YOU if not WHY NOT?
VOTE NOW VOTE NOW

I decided to dose with the 1.5t/gallon and put an update on that in the other thread. I think it is working.

1-5t/g still seems like a pretty big range to me. I guess things in the world of fish aren't that precise. I mean when they say a life expectancy for a certain fish is 5-15 years, that is not really very helpful. That would be like saying the human life expectancy is 26-80 years. All the vague information and totally conflicting advice is frustrating.

I wish there was something where specific topics are covered like diseases and tank setup/maintenance in a simple outline format. Then, allow people to actively compare, critique, and vote on them...and display that information as well. That would be really helpful.

The problem is, such a thing would not be simple at all. There are far too many variables in this hobby to be sure about any one thing, a problem which is compounded by the fact that the fish themselves are never the same. For example, most people would say that Jack Dempseys are evil fish, but I have a co-worker who kept one (no, it was not young, the fish is five inches SL) with "community" fish without problems. Some fish within a species will have a taste for a certain food, others will hate it.

The same goes for sicknesses. In one tank, a person may use salt to help with an ich outbreak. The ich may go away, but the salt may or may not have had anything to do with it. The fish might have healed on their own, or a sudden temp swing caused by a malfunctioning heater could have altered the results. In another tank, a dose of salt may have seemingly made the ich worse.

I'm just throwing things out there, but you get the idea. One person's experience will not necessarily be that of another.

---

And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

Table Salt and sea salt are different substances entirely, sham.

As I have said before. 1.5 teaspoons per gallon was recommended by pufferpunk, RTR, and other fishkeeping veterans of TPF. Ich rarely goes away untreated.

Last edited by Cup_of_Lifenoodles at 29-May-2005 23:23