Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Didn't think I needed to salt cause I was well cycled having 40 perch in there already. I WOZ WONG. They were fine for a good few weeks then I noticed they went off their food. That's when I opened the lid and saw the trout suffering. So I went all around town in a panic and bought 10 kg of cooking salt (was all I could get before I chuffed off to work).

... Which killed most if not all my silvers.

Feck.

Where to go from here? Winter is fast approaching. Worth getting some more trout or large silvers. Man what a *butterflies* up, very embarrassing indeed.

Terrible news colours, what are the water readings?

You must use pool salt , never cooking salt

Always a good thing not to mix fish as this can deliver disease to your fish

Bugger what's wrong with cooking salt? Should I flush the system to remove it? Big big mistake. Bugger.

Cooking salt is iodised which kills fish
Also has anti caking agents

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Tops. Soo what do I do now, it's nearly winter and only a handful of fish left. Don't like my chances of sourcing more trout, but too cold for silvers?

Why did you salt your system? Were your nitrites high?

Sorry, I couldn't help it.

How are your surviving fish going? Have you lost any since the mass loss? And how many are actually left?

I'd do some ringing around for some more trout.

How were the trout suffering? Ich?

As posted above, Iodised salt is bad news for them

Never thought salt would contain iodine but not be labelled as such. A really stupid expensive mistake. I have a handful left. Will post for some more. Thanks for being as honest as you always are! Lol

It's a moot point really, but I wouldn't necessarily assume straight away that your salt was iodised. My understanding is that any salt which is iodised would need to be labelled as such, as it can be a risk for people with certain thyroid conditions.

Oh that sux colours. So will you now do a huge water change to get rid of the (assuming iodised) salt? I wouldn't want to restock until confident the water is ok.

If there are surviving fish, wouldn't that mean it's worked its way out of the system already? Or just hardier fish?

Sorry to hear about your fish, I felt gutted when I lost some of mine because I didn't deal with a brown algae outbreak quickly enough. But I also had a dumb salt mishap, fortunately before I got fish. I thought I would put just a bit of salt in but got mixed up with PPT and % so I went and bought 100k of poolsalt for 10,000L (its cheap) and began pouring it into the sump. Got to 50k in and began to think "gee that seems like a lot of salt, I'll put the rest in tomorrow". Realized that night what I'd done and started water changing the next day.