Am I Doing Salt Treatment Right? How Long It Takes?

Hello, I have yesterday started my first Salt Treatment in my aquarium.

One fish has a white thingy sticking out her chin. Also tetras have red spots on their heads.

So, I dosed my aquarium with pure sea salt 2 teaspoons per gallon, firstly dissolved and I added them couple of spoons at a time throughout the whole day yesterday.

All the fishes even nerite snails are salt tolerant and they are doing great. They have constant bubbles and the temperature is at 77 F...I cannot get it higher because I don’t have a heater.

Hoever, now the fish with the growth has white stringy poop today. Also, the growth is still there and tetras still have red spots. They all act normal though. Is the white poop a good thing during salt treatment? Getting rid of parasites?

I plan to change 25% of water tomorrow and every second day with a vacuum to slowly reduce the salt. Or should I keep adding salt with water changes since the fish are still sick? For how long? I do not plan to introduce any medication.

Thank you ahead for advices

 

Hello
Unfortunately sea salt is not to be use for aquarium treatment you should be using aquarium salt and fallow direction

 

Hello
Unfortunately sea salt is not to be use for aquarium treatment you should be using aquarium salt and fallow direction

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I found written in many places and also was told here that it was ok to use sea salt as long as it does not contain any additives. I made sure I bought pure salt.

 

Pictures qould help. What are your tank params? Ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate, and temperature? Like the person before said, sea salt is no good. Aquarium salt is easily available and cheap. Salt for human consumption has other stuff, like iodine in it. I would get that out, asap by doing water changes.
White poop can be a sign of a lot of different things, depending on the symptoms, medication may or may not be a better option. Kanaplex and metroplex are 2 I keep on hand because they take care of just about anything

 

Pictures qould help. What are your tank params? Ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate, and temperature? Like the person before said, sea salt is no good. Aquarium salt is easily available and cheap. Salt for human consumption has other stuff, like iodine in it. I would get that out, asap by doing water changes.
White poop can be a sign of a lot of different things, depending on the symptoms, medication may or may not be a better option. Kanaplex and metroplex are 2 I keep on hand because they take care of just about anything

Water paramwters are all in check, tank is cycled and and has been for a year without issues. Except occasional brown algae which I keep in check with reduced light time when it is needed.

Like I write, the salt I used does not have any additives. No iodine, no preservatives... it is pure sea salt.

The temperature is 77 F and I cannot increase it because I don’t have a heater. I feed the fish garlic, peas, larvae, veggies, flakes.

I more need of an advice on how long should I continue adding the salt. After how long should the ick disappear from the fish?

 

Water paramwters are all in check, tank is cycled and and has been for a year without issues. Except occasional brown algae which I keep in check with reduced light time when it is needed.

Like I write, the salt I used does not have any additives. No iodine, no preservatives... it is pure sea salt.

The temperature is 77 F and I cannot increase it because I don’t have a heater. I feed the fish garlic, peas, larvae, veggies, flakes.

I more need of an advice on how long should I continue adding the salt. After how long should the ick disappear from the fish?

I'm sorry, I didnt say where you said anything about ich. I read about parasites(sticking out of a chin, I'm guessing the bottom of its gill?), red spots, and white poo. If it is ich, salt is good, but it must be combined with heat to actially kill the ich parasite or the cycle will continue. If you can't get a heater, most pet stores, and even chain stores with a pet section will sell ich cure medication.

 

It doesn't sound like ich from your description. Ich looks like someone sprinkled table salt all over your fish. There are hundreds of little white spots on the fish. One white thing hanging from a mouth, red spots, and white stringy poo are not ich. Perhaps an internal parasite, but not ich.

77 degrees is fine for the fish. You shouldn't need a heater unless there are temperature swings.

Pictures would be helpful. Also, your water readings would be helpful, something more specific than "everything's OK." Sometimes the actual readings can present clues even if they're in the safe range. Diagnosing fish disease is probably the most difficult thing to do in the hobby. You have to detect as many clues as you can and usually it's an educated guess what's going wrong. An exception is ich, which is very obvious because of the appearance of the fish.

You'll get lots of different opinions about what's wrong, and lots of different suggestions for treatment. You just have to look at everything, then make your own decision which direction to take. Even if everyone was standing there looking at your fish, you'd still get completely different diagnoses.

 

You can absolutely use sea salt, or non-iodized salt from the grocery store. In fact, API Aquarium Salt says “made from evaporated sea water” aka sea salt.

That said, I don’t use salt because I’ve seen no evidence of it doing anything helpful for disease, even working in a fish store.