Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Two questians
How many people run salt in there system
And how much per 100 litres

Ithink as an everyday thing, not many if any do. It is mainly used as preventative medicvine at about 3 parts per thousand or to treat fungus, ich etc at around that or a little higher. So that would be 3kg's per 1000 litres or 300 grams per 100 litres. You would probably find the plants suffer under the 3 parts or higher, unlikely that you would want to keep any salt in your system long term IMHO. Hope this helps.

THANKS

I currently have about 1.5ppt salt in the system as preventative. Normally I would not have any, but after the shipment nightmares , I felt a touch of salt might prevent an outbreak of anything nasty. I will eventually work the salt out of the system but no hurry. The plants are doing fine at that level.

If you are using salt, the other thing to consider is how much salt your fish can tolerate. Tilapia are very tolerant of it, as are yellow perch. I'm not familiar with the tolerances for the Aussie fish, of course.

I am at 1ppt right now...shooting for 0 ppt by monday... But then I have had a bit of a crisis.

Do you test to work out how much salt is in your system?
What does ppt mean?
We have bore water here that was 7001-10000ppm in 1957 when bore was drilled. Thinking it has probably changed since then and would like to find out how much salt is in the water.

ppt- parts per thousand. ie 0ne kg of salt per 1000 litres of water is 1 ppt

There are salt tests available, but I think most folks are just measuring the salt going in and calculating from that. If your bore water may have salt in it, then yes, you may need to test it once or have it tested. Just to get a baseline on your bore water, you may be able to take a sample to your local aquarium store. If you explain that you are concerned about the quality of your water and its suitability for fish, they may be able to test pH, salinity, and hardness.

Good old taste test works well too...

Another way to get your water tested may be to find the local conservation organisation (Conservation Volunteers Australia or similar) ask if they are running water tests in the area and see if your site can be included in the regime of tests

What sort of salt should you use (or more importantly what shouldn't you use)? Is swimming pool salt OK?

I'll gladly defer to wiser folks on this, but
1- you don't want iodized table salt - the iodine isn't good for the fish.
2- I would want something that has some additional minerals in it
3- I would go for either aquarium salt (preferably natural) cause it has trace minerals in it, and should be fit for fish consumption.
-Doug

Around here we can get solar salt which is solar distilled ocean salt. It is as natural as it gets. We can buy it at farm supply stores

KE, I bought a bag of pool salt and used that with no after effects (no dead fish and it cleared up the ich).

I think rock salt would be okay as well

Steer clear of table salt as pointed out by greenedo

especially as all table salt will soon have to have iodine in it