Tom2600 wrote:Caesars, the addition of low level salt reduces the osmotic stress on fish, it will not "flush" out parasites or "fight" disease. as far as I am aware there is no reason why salt would help a fish to respire...other than the reduction of its stress levels. Which is an indirect benefit.
There is no reason to use salt. Use a proven chemical treatment.
Tom2600 - I understand the electrolytes which salt adds in the water reduce osmotic pressure to the gills, making it easier for the fish to breathe. See for instance
http://badmanstropicalfish.com/articles/article5.html - I also found the experiments cited here:
http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/p ... cle_id=392 interesting (particularly as they experimented with fish coming from the Amazon, though not catfish).
Here
http://www.fishforever.co.uk/ich.html there is a warning about
high levels of concentration of salt not been tolerated by some species. However I take it this is not a warning against salt, this is a warning against a lot of salt. Same goes for all medications - but when need be we are using them.
In short, it is understood that salt cannot be used carelessly in tropical tanks but that doesn't mean it harms the fish if used with care. Research proves quite the contrary.
Also to add that I have recently got same info as Barbie. There was a debate over the use of Marine Salt in tropical tanks mainly due to its concentration in iodine. However recent studies have shown that tropical fish need iodine as much as everybody else, or they start developing thyroid problems, which adversely affect their growth.
What I didn't know - Barbie you may want to shed some light on this one - is that the use of table salt is now considered ok. I was under the impression that table salt couldn't be used as anti-caking agents and other chemicals to refine it have been added to it. These chemicals were supposed to be dangerous for the fish. Have there been developments on this one?
Also, the higher possible permissible concentration of salt I have ever seen with reference to tropical fish (and that doesn't mean catfish - it is understood that different species are tolerant to different concentrations of salt) is 0.5 ppm as opposed to the 1.001 that Barbie cites - it would be interesting to see some references to this one, if possible.
Btw - this is getting to be a quite interesting debate and as the use of salt is an issue that a number of aquarists have considered maybe one of the administrators would consider moving it somewhere more appropriate - where it is more easily locateable?