Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

quick question, some of my small cod may have ich again, water temp was down to 10.5o monday morning. Have added a couple of doses of salt previously and don't want to overdo it. Water is only topped up by rainfall and rain/tank water, no need to change out as ammonia etc levels settled at zero. How quickly is the salt used/diluted as the water is used and topped up?
ie to salt shock the ich, if there is say 3ppm salt left, now I need to go to 6ppm salt to get the 3ppm change needed to kill the ich, then next time if the salt is at 5ppm I need 8ppm to kill the ich but the salt build up maybe getting too high for fish and plants if you get my drift.
any help would be greatly appreciated
thanks
cod fish

Ifyou don't do water changes,asin empty outthe water,your salt levelshould not drop very much at all.
Most water is lost by evaporation and salt will seperate from water before evaporationand remain in the system. Iguess you loose a little with each fish or plantyou harvest,but that would be quite small.

dunno, but tommies can taste quite salty from a system with high NaCl.................

a refractometer can give you a good indication, and even better if you have a non-salted reading + post salted reading + "i wonder how much i have now" reading

FYI salt taste threshold in humans is about 3,500ppm (3.5ppt) it took me bloody ages to find that, and a very specific search string

chappo, bit along my line of thinking, that salt doesn't tend to dilute too much, kids and visitors all say it smells like the ocean, hence my dilema, if the little ones do have ich again, the salt level needs to be higher to shock/kill it as it will be adjusted to the current salinity level. I don't think another dose of salt will cause a problem, but maybe the next or the next dose after that! It must eventually become lethal as the ppm builds up. Is it worth buying something to check salinity levels? or just change out half the tank (bush lemon tree wouldn't mind) and dose away. Don't really want to do this as it will take nutrients away from my system at a time my fish aren't feeding too well.
anyway thanks chappo
cod fish
hey Steve, got in before me, don't mind salty toms, only add it to them after anyway, would be interesting to check readings with the refractometer so I might look around for one but the budget probably won't stretch that far (am hoping to get some new tanks soon, find out tomorrow? maybe?)
cod fish

my point is that if you can taste the salt in the tommies then the conc is atleast 3.5 ppt.

i wouldn't discount the vegetation slowly removing the salt...................

btw you can by a refractometer on ebay (coming from HK) for about $40.

holy crap, i just tested my water and it shows 10ppt! keep in mind i have nothing growing except mint atm...............and i have no idea what my nitrates are either. my pump seems to have stopped working too (was dark when i got home............) wheres that torch now..........................

tested my new tank and have under 1ppt which is about what i put in (1 fish, no beds)

Ppm think it should be ppt .I got a refractometer from ebay $30.00 i think also my system looses 1 ppt every 3 months

Wheres the trout atm

in that system.

going to sus pump out now. that will learn me for cleaning it yesterday.

see my thread for report on pump and musings

thanks, cheap as chips I see
cod fish

Cant see anything yet

Spinach seems particularly apt at sucking up the salt, you can see it has crystalised on mine:

I've seen spinach do that in Hydroponics too. All salts there.

I've used a TDS meter to estimate my salt level before. Perhaps not super accurate but it was good enough to give me a pretty good idea.

Anyway, if you are not wanting to do water changes because it will hurt your plants, remember that most of your plants won't do well with really high salt levels. Most fish are good with salt levels much higher than most plants like. What I am saying here is that if you avoid water changes in order to keep nutrients up for your plants, you may well wind up killing the plants with salt levels in order to keep increasing it to combat the fish problem and then you wind up with high nitrates, few plants and water that is too salty to be good for watering something in the ground for water changing.