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i have had different types of goldfish for past two years. i just upgraded to a 60 gall. tank. i have been told i need to add salt once in a while. my fish have been growing healthy since day one. the more i ask the more i get confused. what is the deal with the salt? do i or dont i? somebody tell me please.

Hi there,
well, I think a lot of people see salt as being some
"magic cure all", when really its mostly placebo.
People think its doing something, really the only thing its doing is aiding in cellular osmosis by making membranes thinner to allow more transfer of water.

Salt also does help in preventing parasites, many parasites dont like salt at all.

In my experience, salt often causes more harm than good, depending on your actual fish. For example, I was advised early on to put salt in my aquarium. "Sure its fine with all fish" said the LFS employee I spoke to.
I was not impressed when 24 hours later I had 9 dead cory cats.

Your fish, assuming you have only goldfish, would be very tolerant of salt. Do they need it? No, they dont. They are freshwater fish, and require no salt whatsoever.

So yeah, thats my take on it.
Dunno if its helpful or not, but thats how I see it.


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Some aquarists say If it aint broke don't fix it.

I have been too scared to add salt in case all my guys go belly up. But I am a conservative aquarists...

Others with more experience will be more knowledgeable in their response. Mine is not very technical.

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~~~ My fish blow kisses at me all day long ~~~

Somewhere around here are some good threads on why not to add salt to a freshwater tank. I'd suggest using the search function and you'll probably find tons of info. Basically goldfish are truly freshwater fish and never evolved the means to deal with salt so adding it is more harmful than good. However temporarily adding salt can help with some illnesses. It does also tend to improve fish color but not really for healthy reasons. Since goldfish tolerate salt pretty well for being a freshwater fish alot of people think they should add it to prevent illnesses. Salt is a poor preventative though. It's much better when used short term for a specific problem than dosed regularly. Most people do not ever add salt to their freshwater tank.

thats why i love this site. im just a beginner, and i get so much feedback.

THANKS ALL.

Thank you for that post sham. Now I do not feel so neglectful for eschewing salt. I always get the impression people advocate adding salt to ensure good health. Yet from what you say it is really a temporary thing to counter illness that is already present. Good post. /:'

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~ My fish blow kisses at me all day long ~~~

The only time I've used salt is for mollies. They do prefer a bit of salt, but by and large I would not use it. Many species can tolerate it well and many others are quite intolerant of it. As sham said, it is more effective if used when needed than used as a preventative.
Oh, and we ARE talking about AQUARIUM SALT here, not table salt, not marine or ocean salt, not kosher salt only aquarium salt.

Well you can use other salts as "aquarium" salt. Rock salt(used it), noniodized table salt(actually controversial since some people claim the iodine isn't harmful in the first place), and other sources that are just sodium chloride. Marine salt also isn't always bad to use for treating freshwater fish but it does contain buffers so if you don't already have liquid rock water like me with a ph of 8.2 then it would raise the ph. Changing the ph leads to stress so would be bad if you have softwater.

Mollies needing salt is highly debated. In the wild they are found from freshwater to full saltwater and in captivity have been bred for generations in only freshwater. When researching the salt level that poecilia species(guppies and mollies) tolerate I did not see any correlation between health or lifespan and amount of salt added to the tank. The genetics, other tank maintenance practices, and whether the fish were allowed to breed constantly had a much greater impact on the average lifespan than adding any amount or type of salt. Unless you are getting wild caught or a few generations from that and you know they came from brackish or marine waters I wouldn't even add salt to a tank of mollies or other livebearers. They have evolved to handle salt unlike fish such as goldfish but they don't need it to be healthy.