Stopped adding salt, fish not happy

[djm761]

I was told by a friend of my sons to stop adding salt to my tanks, he said south american fish produce enough slime with out it, he did tell me that their immune systems would be weak for awhile but I wasn't expecting this.

My 220g has an out break of ich and body flukes and the 150g 45g and 36g seem to have gill mites and body flukes. And they all have chapped fins. The body flukes may be fish lice I'm not sure how to tell the difference.

first question should I have decreased the salt content more slowly by adding half doses for awhile.

second question does anyone think I should add salt to the tanks now. the 220 is recovering quickly because of the hardy fish but the other three aren't as easy cory cats plecos and tetras.

 

[KcMopar]

How much salt where you using per gallon and how much water change are you doing? Salt does not go away and only needs to be added when doing water change. (I use salt but only to add minerals. I use instant ocean for salt tanks. I use about 1/2 teaspoon per gallon of water change. I also add sodium bicarbonate and magnesium sulfate as well to get the pH and GH up to. Then I dose calcium hydroxide as well to maintain and this add calcium for the snail shells as well. I only have dead ones for decor, non live but, without the calcium they erode away.) This stuff I do is not necessary at all, I just like to reproduce my African cichlids home water conditions. And as a bonus the colors are better.
Stopping the salt probably didn't start this, have you added new fish? You might need to get some antibiotics and prepare for a cycle. I have never found salt to help with fish aliments, some folks say they do but, I have just never seen any difference. For the ich jack up the temp to 84-86-ish slowly. The other tanks might take meds. Be sure the med you get are safe for your fish. Also fish with out scales should not be exposed to salt!!

 

[Thyra]

Here is site you might be interested in:

Aquaworld Aquarium - Adding Salt to a Freshwater Aquarium

One of the problems I see is the salt doesn't evaporate and so your salinity could change a lot over time if you keep adding the same amount with your water changes - you would have to take in account the amount of water that evaporated.

 

[KcMopar]

You sure do, when mine gets to between 1.001 and 1.002 I skip salt on that change, its been up to almost 1.004 but we try to avoid that. It does not happen often but I check every time.

 

[djm761]

Ive been thinking about it and its hard to say what happened or even which tank it started in, when I set up the 220 I moved so many fish, it seems each tank has fish from at least two other tanks, the ich in the 220 is about gone but now I see a fish in the 150 is infected.

salt: I was adding 1 TBS per 5 gallons, but yes I did have salt accumulation, I always siphoned down to the 50 gallon mark, never really paid attention to where I started from, but always added salt for 50 gallons, my mistake.

Thyra thanks for the link, it's very helpful.

 

[KcMopar]

I need to add an edit to my first post, it says i add 1/2 teaspoon to a gallon, I add that amount to 10 GALLONS on a gallon.