Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

1ppt salt is going to do sweet FA to the fungus or whatever ailment your fishes have.

Just be careful catfish dont like salt so i am told
i have never had them so i dont know

Yep, probably catfish wont handle much past 3ppt... might have to give them a quick salt bath... then back to the tank...

I probably put in about 25 pounds of salt and it did not raise the salinity of the tank..
Why not? Who knows.
Question will the grow beds suck up the salt I put in?
I had to make a trip to Fort Smith today and while there I bought a lot more salt. Pure salt.
I checked with and aquarium shop and found that I should have about 1 1/2 gallons of salt to make it go to 1.03 on the hydrometer. Don't really know how to change gallons to pounds but I will try in the morning to put in about a 1/2 gallon and try that. I will also try putting it into a 5 gallon bucket and dissolve it first and pour it into tank that way to see if I can get any reactor on the hydrometer. I did test the hydrometer in about a 1/2 gallon container with a 1/4 cup of salt. The hydrometer did float up like it should. By noon tomorrow they should feel like ocean fish in salt water getting the cure.

Other answer The only other thing the water could have touched was the tarp over the tank but it is not new and it has been rained on and washed by the well water that filled the tank so i don,t think that is the problem. I originally filled the tank from the river and I think that is where the fungus came from. I just did not know it was there cause I could not see the fish till yesterday and today. The tank is clearing up fast. About noon when I scooped out the dead fish you could see the tank bottom and the dead fish lying on their sides and upside down. When I got home just as it was getting dark I noticed that there are a few catfish swimming around so they did not all die but hid somewhere while I scooped out their friends.

A lot of the Cats are gone but a few remain that I saw tonight. Im just going to treat the whole system as the beds must have it also. I am not going to start over with bleach water to clean it all up. That would mean losing all my plants and the Blue Gills. I will just figure out how to get the salt to make it up to 1.03 and keep it there for a few days then let it go low again and continue on.
Thanks all of you who replied.

Yes the plants will suckup the salt

F&F you seem to know about using salt.
So If I put in enough salt to get to 1.03%, how long will it stay in the water and should I keep it up for some time or not.
Today I will try to get it up to 1.03 some how. Yesterday I bought a lot of salt to use to treat the tank.

Here is a thread that has some numbers that may help you to figure out how many pounds of salt per some amount of water to get to a particular ppt level on the salt.
http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3179

Be careful catfish and bluegill are both definitely fresh water fish and won't do well with relaly high salt levels so I only ever salt to about 3 ppt tops with those two types of fish.

What did the disease on the catfish look like? Could you see fish with problems before they died?

You did mention pulling a pile of dead fish out that were "piled up with the uneaten feed."
Overfeeding and catfish are a very bad combination. Especially when it happens while weather is still a bit cool and/or it causes spikes in ammonia or nitrite. Catfish skin is very sensitive and ammonia spikes definitely stress them.

Anyway, I've dealt with a few outbreaks of columnaris (sp?) disease which often shows up as white patches on the back like a white saddle but can also attack the gills. It is actually a bacterial disease and I believe it is often present in the water and I've had my systems recover from it without sterilizing. The key is keeping the water quality as high as possible, don't overfeed, and avoid stressing the catfish. Bluegill can also catch this disease but they have scales so are perhaps a little more resistant than the catfish. When handling the fish, I notice that between the stress of a net coming into their world and the scrapes to the skin that some of them get, I can sometimes get an outbreak of illness after doing some harvesting and the scrapes from the net are probably a big trigger on the catfish. I've not taken to making a net dip for when I will be doing a lot of harvesting. I mix up a bin of water salt and aloe to dip the net in before and between catching fish.

I am curious about this too. Since the water only recently cleared, could there have been dead catfish from before the rain?
Do the survivors have the "fungus" too?

Here's hoping the worst is over.

Rick

Using salt some do some dont
I do i usually only use salt if adding new fish or i notice spots fungas ect then i dose to 3 ppt with my system
you normally only need the first dose and after a time depending on the plant load ect the salt will be used maybee 1 month 2 months

My system is a bit different from most as it has 5 different tanks i can put fish and i can isolate any one so i just dose that tank and after a few days i let it back into the main system

Ahhhh I found the magic numbers for the salt in the middle of someones post with a lot of fiddling around with all the numbers. They had found the formula but did not realize it.

It is 2.4 lbs salt per 100 gallons = 0.3 percent.

After pulling my hair out trying to figure out why I could not get my tank to change when I put 40lbs in to it I finally calculated the volume. Unless I am wrong again the tank is 10 feet diameter and 28 inches deep, so
pi r squared *height=volume
3.14159 * 5*5 = 78*28=2200 gallons

and I was using 1100 gallons for my calcs.

2.4 times 22 = 53 lbs of salt
I need to put in about 13 more.

Well it is getting closer. I have now put in 70lbs of salt today and I'm getting a 1.01 reading on the hydrometer. I'm gonna put in more in a bit.

z

70 pounds of salt is equivalent to 32kgs of salt

We generally say 1 kilo of salt to 1000 litres of water to make 1ppt.

Your 70 pounds / 32 kilos should be enough to take 11000 litres / 2800 gallons of water to 3ppt.

You may have
1. crappy salt (we use pool salt here)
2. a crapload of water
3. dodgy refractometre

I would say wait for a bit and make sure the salt has completely dissolved and mixed throughout your water!!!!!

Don't simply dump salt into a fish tank since salt crystals will simply sit on the bottom for a long time before they dissolve and if a fish rests against undissolved salt crystals it can burn them.

And you don't want to put too much salt in as that could be bad for the fish as well as the plants.