Aquarium salt good or bad?

Well I noticed my tank (40 gallons, live plants, 1 mystery snail, 5 Molly fry, 3 peppered cories, 3 neon tetras, 6 platys, 1 Bristlenose, 1 dwarf gourami) 3 fish have white spots on their fins all my fish have also been fluking/flashing. I'm going to steadily raise the temp without cooking my cories and want to use aquarium salt but I have heard some myths..

Will the salt kill snails?

Will it harm fry?

Will it kill live plants?

Will it off set your biological filtration?

Also will it tamper with ph?

 

Salt theoretically can do all of them. But guides on internet does not recommend having that large amounts of table salt. And that little my friend is not enough to remove the ich. Ich is a hard type, If you've got them, and raising temperature can kill some of them, which would lead to a much harder variety acquiring the tank.
Ich need live animals to complete its lifecyle.
SO I suggest you remove all your fish into a tank treated with a commercially available medication (Most of them contain methylene blue). Keep this for a period of two weeks, with constant(and I mean daily, or twise a day in both the treating tank and the main tank) water changes.
P.S. Cories may be less tolerant to commercial medications and its much tolerant to ich. You can treat it with water changes only.
P.P.S. There is a much higher chance of removing ich only by doing water changes without adding salt or raising temperature.

 

There's plenty of heat & salt resistant strains of ich, thanks to people doing a lame treatment with salt & heat. Meth blue won't make a dent in ich, you'll need a formalin/malachite green based med. Chloroquine Phosphate is used for formagreen resistant strains, with either go with a 50%-75% dosage where snails, fry, and species such as cats are involved. Water changes only will not cure ich, for really sensitive species you can cure it with two bare tanks, switching tanks daily & letting the tank you're not using completely dry after a good cleaning, no medications involved but a lot of work.

 

(reference post #32 above)





Plain and simple, salt is not necessary in fresh water aquariums and it may do more harm than good.

Ken

 

Okay... I have been looking into the Tetra ick guard tabs. I'm aware they will due the silicone and ornaments. I guess I will do a half dose because of my corydoras and I will remove my snail as well. I have the temp up right now so let's hope since I caught it early that it will go away quick.

 

If you're using meds then unless the instructions say to raise the temperature then I wouldn't, meds + heat is often not a good combination.

 

What is the highest I should raise it with the peppered cories?

 

If you're using heat alone then it needs to be raised to 86 & kept there for two weeks.
The peppered won't like it but they should be ok for that short time, keep a close eye on them for any signs of distress.
If they're going to the top a lot more than usual you could add an air stone to help with oxygenation as warm water holds less oxygen than cold.

 

If you're using heat alone then it needs to be raised to 86 & kept there for two weeks.
The peppered won't like it but they should be ok for that short time, keep a close eye on them for any signs of distress.
If they're going to the top a lot more than usual you could add an air stone to help with oxygenation as warm water holds less oxygen than cold.

Okay thanks so much it really helps I'm slowly raising it now and am also using MarineLand ich remedy at half dose

 

Didn't read all the comments but in the past when I had ICH I removed the snails and then treated the tank with whatever medication I could afford at the time. Mollies and Platy's were the ones who seemed to die from it the most while everyone else got healthy. Snails can't have anything with copper and generally don't tolerate much for salt, foruntaley they aren't actually fish and don't normally get ICH Just rinse them off and move them to a holding tank *or a bunch of jars and bowls etc!!* Goodluck!!