salt and anti-caking agents

are anti-caking agents really so bad for fish when they are perfectly find for us ?

table salt is about 95% salt and 5% anti-caking agents and perfectly fine for us to use and ive been advised by local LFS to add basic table salt to tanks in the past.

i believe there are people on here who have used it but are unlikely to speak up for fear of being flamed but it would be nice to hear from any who have.

ive seen threads many threads that say dont use table salt because of the anti-caking agent but ive never seen one that says why.

so .... does anyone have any **good** reason that we shouldnt use table salt when treating tanks ?


dont bother posting if your just going to put "why would you" as it doesnt answer the question sorry but thats the kind of thing that stops people from asking questions in the first place.

Aquanero said:

The anti-caking used in table salt is Yellow prussate of soda (sodium ferrocyanide). I have used it in the past when that was all that was available. Used alone as a salt treatment in small quantities for short periods of time I've never had an issue with it (used on cichlids). Having said that if at all possibile use salt without it. Long term exposure as a tonic is not advisable. I would also advise against its use in conjunction with medacations as you can never tell what the contradictions may be, you might kill the fish if somthing in the medacation reacts with the cyanide to create a leathal combination. This is only my opinion on the subject.

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thank you for all the replys and whilst i dont think we have solar salt in the uk we can get 99.9 % salt for other purposes.

that said i cant argue with aquanero and i think that answers my question as well as can be. many thanks for the reply