Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi guys.
I was just hoping I could get one of the experts to post about salting.

I've got some fish flashing like they are trying to rub something on the bottom of the tank. I've read plenty through the forum about salting but of course that sort of thing is hard to find when one goes looking for it.

The info I think would be helpful to many people include.

1-What situations call for salt and how much is appropriate for the different situations. (like one situation might call for 3 ppt to the hole system while another situation calls for isolating the affected fish in another tank and salting at a different rate while yet a different problem calls for salt dip baths at an even higher amount of salt.)

2-What kinds of salt are appropriate and why? Or why some types of salt would be bad.

3-Where to get said salt.

4---This is the one I probably need the most help with since I didn't grow up with the Metric system---
How to calculate the appropriate amount of salt for the amount of water in a system.

5-Should one later do water changes to purge the salt from the system?

First answer on your thread, i'll check some other stuff too.
Second is table not iodised sea salt, by it by the kilo at the supermarket, take big grain salt as it will dissolve itself slower and will reduce shock for the fish but not for disease.

Not metric is 3 kg of salt for 222 gallons of water.

The salt will be used by the systems because it will contain lots of trace elements and the plants will use up the NaCl of the salt under different forms.

TCL

I was having some different problems, but they called for salt as well. Here is the thread, which shows the conversions I did from metrics. Do you have the convert program, if not, you can get it from the download area. There is also a section in the manual/magazine that talks about salt as well. As you will see from the thread below, I do not qualify as an "expert", but maybe it will help you some.

http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/vie ... c&start=15

Thanks all.

I did look through the magazine (first issue at least) perhaps I missed the salt part.

I am hoping this or a moderators answer to this gets turned into a sticky thread for the info sections though for everyone's future reference.

If difficult white pot variety, as it depends the fish farmer was treating them with. Give a go with formol in a separate container. I'll come back to it as i can't remember the dosing of it but it works well, the only problem is to dispose of the left treating water properly even if its not that bad.

Here is what I use for conversions
Measurement Units conversion
So I can figure out how many liters my system is and so forth.

The tricky part is, that different size grain salt is going to be a different weight per volume measure I guess. I don't have anything more accurate for weighing things than a bathroom scale at the moment.

I just found a page that gives some info on salt.
Pond Chemistry
The page is really geared for koi ponds but I was able to figure out dosing rates using some of their info.

Like
4lb of salt per 100 gallons will give 5ppt

1000 lb of water is aprox 125 gallons

100 gallons is aprox 800 lb

So
1 lb of salt per 100 gallons = 1.25 ppt
1 lb of salt per 125 gallons = 1 ppt


does all this sound about right?

If this is the case then for my 600 gallons (is may be a bit more right now as the water is a bit high.)

Anyway 600 gallons and trying to get a 3 ppt of salt to help fish without hurting plants.

3 ppt divide by 1.25 ppt = 2.4 lb per 100 gallons to get the 3 ppt

2.4 lb salt times 6 = 14.4 lb of salt into my system to approach 3 ppt.

Now I just have to figure out how to measure out 14 lb of salt. Any ideas?

Will probably go get a 40 or 50 lb bag of the sun dried pure water softener salt.
Not pellets or any of the other fancy salts. Or perhaps if the pool shop is still open, I'll check out pool salt.

TC

A link page to 'salt'. Some articles are good, some not so. http://en.mimi.hu/aquarium/salt.html

Got salt.
solar water softener salt (that means sun dried basically in this case.)
No additives.

Less than $4 at the grocery store for 40 lb (18.1 KG)

I've done my best (with bathroom scale) to measure out 14 Lb of salt for my 600 gallons of tank. Actually I think I measured out 15 lb since 14.4 lb is for the 600 gallons and the water level in the system is actually a bit higher than that currently so 15 lb seemed like a number I could perhaps measure. Anyway, after measuring out containers with the 15 lb in. I then checked that the amount remaining in the bag showed the appropriate weight since measuring small weights on such a scale is kinda inaccurate.

I plan to salt tomorrow morning so I am hoping that if I've screwed up my figuring, some one will catch it before I go ahead!!!

I see it's been stickied. I hope that means no one found fault with my figures. Perhaps some of the experts will answer some of the questions in the original post for the benefit of the group.
Thanks

TC, i've checked it, seems right but bloody difficult to count your way, lbs and gallons makes my brain go mad.
When are you gonna go metric, grams and liters???!!

LOL, I can convert using that measurment units conversion link but then I'm working with wonking numbers like 2271. somthing liters and I don't have a scale that reads grams at the moment. 15 lbs wasn't too hard to weigh out from a 40 lb bag.

I have to say that is the beauty of the Convert.exe item found on this forum. It sits on my desktop and I can convert and post easily.

And, I must say, it is an amazing amount of salt it takes to salt a system to 3ppt. We'll see how my strawberries fare.

Fingers crossed for your strawberries and mine!

Ran up a post confirming your figures TC but obviously didn't hit the "Submit" button yesterday

So "YES" - 15lb in 600gals is ~3ppt