Was looking up info on using arm&hammer (sodium bicarbonate) as a buffering agent and found this website and their info on salt if anyone cares.http://www.aquascienceresearch.com/APInfo/Salt.htm
sodium chloride, NaCl
- Thread starter justin
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What they are trying to say is that adding salt to your aquarium on a regular basis is almost a waste of time. Ick and other such parasites can adapt to the concentrations used in freshwater aquaria. Then you would have to add more above and beyond to maybe have the result you want which in turn can hurt your freshwater fish. It is better to use very little maybe a quarter of suggested on package only for gill function and help against nitrates. They are stating as a dip it works well which I agree with because I use it on all my wild fish and some purchased fish. That is the main use. A dip is functional by osmosis. A freshwater dip for saltwater fish and a saltwater dip for freshwater fish. Osmosis is the net movement of water through a selective permeable membrane from a region of low solute potential to a region of high solute potential (or equivalently, from a region of high solvent potential to a region of low solvent potential. Basically if a parasite is saltwater and you dip it in freshwater it trys to equal the amount of salt in the parasite with its surrounding environment which has none because it is freshwater. Likewise a freshwater parasite with no salt is dipped into saltwater solution. The parasite either shrivels and dies or it pops from absorbing so much water. That is why human skin shrivels in water because it is trying to equal its environment.