Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi Everyone,
Some time ago I salted my fish tank and I have been thinking it may be time to repeat the exercise.Does anyone know what salt levels are acceptable for plants / silver perch and how to measure them?
I have lost 3 fish over the last 3weeks but they all looked healthy. I know,dead and healthy seems a bit confused,but what I mean is fins,eyes and skin ok.So maybe stress,hence my thought to add salt.
Cheers

Are you able to remove the fish, salt bath them then put them back in to the main system.

I went back through some of your posts and I see you had some probs in 2012 as well. Im assuming your talking about your SP, are they still the older ones or is this a new batch after they 2 year olds you lost? Seems in the last 6 months you have had some infectious issues with you fish but its very hard to pin point the problem.

In relation to the salt, I salted my FT to 3ppt over a year ago and its still at 3ppt. Its handy to have a refractometer so you know where your at if your salting. You can get them for about $30 on ebay.

How much salt did you add and how long ago was it?

My fish are indeed silvers bought as fingerlings about 6 mths ago to replace the 2yo fish I lost about 8mths ago.
When I salted I used cooking salt,apparently a no no.I have a 1000 lt tank so I put in 3 kgs to make it 3ppt.
After finding out I shouldn't have used cooking salt I left the system fish less for a couple of months to filter out any impurities.
When I introduced the new fingerlings i found one dead after a couple of months and assumed it was a runt.
A couple died more recently so I am being cautious after my previous disaster.
From what you say ,Charlie,the salt seems to hang around in the system a fair while.I have measured the SG of the water at just under 1.000 using a hydrometer but have no idea how to translate that to ppt.
Might need to get a refactometer as you suggest.
On a positive note all 20 remaining fish look healthy and are behaving normally.
Thanks for your inputs and I will continue to monitor.

Charlie i cant understand how the salt hangs around still. Normally the plants will use it up over 3 or so months
when my system was running i used to 2 kg salt every 4 to6 months

Its possible the blue metal I have used is salty. I was told recently that the quarry the basalt comes from has hyper saline water deposits.

well if you're in kal then that cant be surprising... your area's got the largest salinity problem in the state!