Salt

[Steve W]

Hi all

Salt is it good or bad for koi i have never heared anything about it latley.

None of the big guys ever seem to talk about it.

Steve W

[keokoi]

Its not just for french fries anymore Salt is rarely used for parasitic applications as it was at one time. Still used but your right not as much...


Joe

[dick benbow]

Let's take a walk back in the history of salt use in koi.

Initially it was used to shock parasites into a condition called reverse osmossis.
It was done by saturating the water with all the salt that could be coaxed into the water to make a brine. Then the unsuspecting koi was dropped in, causing it to go into shock as it struggled unable to breathe. Then at the last minute it was "rescued" and placed into pond water, where it alledgedly "recovered" from the trama sans any parasites. Many koi were killed. And strains of parasites became salt resistant.

We have seen similar changes made by bacteria regarding broad spectrum anti bioltics. I can go on forever but here's my point.

Don't use anything medicinally... indiscriminatly! If you are not using it for a specific reason/condition ( ie: put 3% salt in your pond every spring to help the koi transistion ) then you need not use it.

[MikeM]

Steve: You will read all sorts of things about salt.

Some people recommend keeping a low level of salt in a pond at all times, such as 0.1% or less. I would never do that because: 1) koi are truly freshwater fish. They do not encounter salt in nature, nor in the mudponds of Japan. 2) If water conditions are appropriate they do not need the assistance of salt to ease the osmotic burden on their systems. 3) Maintaining low levels of salt decreases the usefulness of salt when it is needed to assist a fish or as a medicinal treatment.

There are some good uses for salt. When fish are stressed by being moved or injury, adding salt to a concentration of 0.1% to 0.2% or thereabouts can ease the osmotic balance strain on the fish. If biofiltration is set back, a low salt level will protect the koi from nitrite poisoning for a week or so ... often enough time for the nitrifier community to recover.

Salt is my preferred treatment for Ich (and from what I see posted I think it usually works on Chilodonella and some strains of Costia, although a Pro-Form C treatment is more likely to be recommended.) But, the old recommendation of using a salt concentration of 0.3% was more geared to protecting water plants than saving the fish. Koi can handle 0.6% salt and at that concentration many parasites are set back, if not eliminated. (However, salt is deadly if used in combination with any of the formalin based medications, which are generally the more recommended treatment of choice for most parasites.)

You will get a debate over whether parasites have become salt resistant as a result of indiscriminate use of salt, or whether salt was only ever effective as a sudden shock to the system of the target parasites. The bottom line is that salt is not the cure-all it is said to be in some writings. But, I still keep enough on hand to treat my pond to 0.6%, just in case Ich pops up when a frost visits Florida in January.

[dick benbow]

mike, your follow up with how to use salt properly is appreciated!

[Steve W]

Hi all

Thanks chaps for mostly confirming my thoughts
that there is more effective treatments about.



Steve W

[REC]

Steve,

I borrowed the following from KoiVet. It is a post I made on salt facts and myths and it might be good info for consumption or debate.. Enjoy..

Salt Stories...

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I really like talking about salt... almost as much as fungus and post-morts... so, here are somethings that we know as FACT about salt use...

1. Table salt..normal old iodized salt.. will not hurt your fish. Period. The old theory was that the iodine would hurt the filter... not true.. we tested this and proved it would not at concentrations to .6% over prolonged periods of time.

2. The primary reason we should not use table salt is the cost....MCA is absolutely right about this... but for aquarium, bath, and small qt-tank use... iodized salt is just fine.

3. Any salt with anti-caking agents in it is just bad. Ms Diva is spot on about the granular problems with some of the anti-caking agent. YPS (yellow prussate of sodium) when exposed to UV (sunlight) breaks down to a cyanide-related compound (do I have this right, Roddy?).

4. Most Kosher salts are bad..bad..bad.. they have other additives that make their use unattractive to fish (like YPS).

5. Places like Home Depot, Lowe's, Giant Foods, etc all have the water softener salt... 40 pounds = $6 or so. This is 99.7% pure salt and says so right on the bag. Sure, you need to work with it a bit, like dissolve it before adding it to the pond, but for large applications, it is the only thing that makes sense.

6. Sea salt, aquarium salt, and all of those other fancy pet-store salts are just WAY over-priced natural salt products. The type of salt called "sea" salt is just dried up sea water scraped into a bottle. The good thing about it is that there are lots of minerals in the water... but freshwater fish on a good diet will get the same effect from their food. Let's see? 69 cents for a pound of Morton Salt (iodized or not)??? $29.50 for a couple of pounds of "sea" salt?? The only time one should consider using sea salts is for marine tanks.

7. What koi really need is the chloride part of the salt compound. Ms Diva is right again (she usually is..) that potassium chloride and calcium chloride will provide the same chloride benefits but there is a price to pay for this. Koi and goldfish require exceptionally low levels of potassium and calcium in their physiological diets as compared to sodium (sodium chloride is table salt) so by trying to up your "salt" level with KCl or CaCL, you might inadvertantely hurt your fish with an overdose of potassium or calcium.. not impossible to do. In extreme ulcer cases, I will use a carefully measured combo of NaCL, KCL, and CaCL in the q-tank water to bring the electrolyte levels up in the fish as an open wound ulcer will "leak" electrolytes and the fish needs them back. This practice roughly equates to the use of Ringer's Lactate on humans in trauma cases. Gatorade is supposed to do the same thing but don't use it on your fish.

Primarily we use salt for two reasons: kill parasites and "smooth" out the fish's physiological balance through improving its osmoregulation process (which is managed by chloride). Fish use chloride to process waste through the kidneys, including excess water (freshwater fish do not drink water and do not like excess water). This is why in dropsy cases I recommend a .6% salt bath as the first step for stable fish to see if we can jump start the osmo process and have the fish expel the excess fluid all by itself.

And fish have special structures in their gills called " chloride pumps" that pull the chloride out of the water. This is part of the osmo process and the theory is that by us adding more chloride ions to the water, we reduce the fish's activity to "pump" it in. With osmoregulation, we know that the flow of "salt" ions is from lower concentrations (hypotonic) to higher concentrations (hypertonic). What this means is that because the fish has to maintain a .9% blood salt level to have all of its parts work right, it needs to "pump" chloride ions from the water into its blood stream and this requires energy to do this. So, as we increase the chloride levels of the water, we reduce the amount of energy the fish uses to pump in the chloride ions. This equals less stress.

Can you add too much salt?? The answer is yes, you can. The blood salt (chloride) level of koi and goldfish, like humans, is .9%. The chloride level of natural water is in the .03 to .1% range depending on where you live. So, you can see in natural conditions, the flow of ions is from the lower water concentration to the higher body concentration. And salt levels up to .8% will allow the freshwater fish's physiological processes to work fine. But when the water salt levels hit .9% and higher, the process starts to reverse and the salts are pulled out of the fish. You can even say that you can dehydrate a freshwater fish in water with salt levels above .9%.

Now, to Gerald's question...(took a long time, huh, GW?)... koi and goldfish will tolerate salt levels up to .8% just fine over extended periods of time (more or less), physiologically speaking. But increased salt levels (let's say over .3%) start to really irritate the fish and this causes increased mucous production and over time, a whole different set of problems. I am sure that many of you have read where prolonged salt exposure to levels up to .8% have been used by some koi keepers to fight off persistent parasites, but I gotta tell you, this is not to be tried at home as in fact, it can be dangerous. And if you have to fight parasites at .8% or higher, gee, there are better ways to do this than completely terrorizing the osmo system of a fish. Other than an occassional .6% bath for medicinal purposes, I would never use a higher level of salt for anything.

So, don't you wish that you had paid attention in high school biology class?? Salt is just too important to freshwater fish to not understand how it works and what it does. For those no-believers, if you want to try a nasty experiment, place a fish in distilled water and watch what happens... but do not walk away as this fish will start to deteriorate in a hurry without chloride in the water.

Final thought.... the chloride levels of our source water are more than enough to sustain the health of our fish... but measure the salt level of your source water just so that you know. And only use more salt in the water when you absolutely need to. Maintaining a higher than natural salt level is just not the best idea we have come up with lately.

Enough on salt??

REC

[MikeM]

Bravo, REC. Thanks.

[bekko]

Dick, sorry to be argumentative and anal, but....

It is unlikely that the continued use of low salt levels led to the development of salt-resistance in protozoans like Costia. However, it is likely that Costia (Icthyobodo) species or Costia strains which are naturally salt tolerant eventually found their way into farms which continuously use low levels of salt. Some members of this group are marine or estuarine and the taxonomy is poorly understood.

These little protozoans seem small and primitive, but are much more advanced than bacteria. As such, they are not as plastic as bacteria and evolutionary changes are not likely to happen in the time frame we're talking about.

-steve

[MikeM]

Bumping this thread to the top for the benefit of adreamer2.