Good info about use of salts in aquariums

[islandguy11]

This video (from Cory at Aquarium Co-op; love him, hate him or somewhere in between, it's not the point of this thread), contains a lot of useful and imho good sense info about using salts in aquariums.

More experienced fish keepers will likely know most of the info already but you still might learn a thing or two, and esp. if you're newer to the hobby there's some good info/advice (esp. in the first 30 min. or so, after that he gets into 'super chats' etc.).

And as he points out, it could very well be the case -- with more and more countries banning certain fish meds -- that using salt to treat our fish/tanks becomes even more important/widely used than it already is, so it would be prudent to have some related knowledge:

 

[RD.]

2+ hours long? Really?

 

[duanes]

The "significant salt part" is about 45 minutes, he then answers random basic aquarium questions.
One of the points he makes, salt (NaCl) is salt, and whether you use aquarium salt, rock salt, table (with non-caking agents) or iodized salt, it really doesn't matter.
Grade of salt does matter when dosing by volume.
This is one of the reasons I usually suggest when dosing for ick, do it by weight, I use 3.5 lbs of salt per 100 gallons when treating cichlids for ick to bring salinity to 3.5 ppt (parts per thousand), because I use simple rock salt ($5 per 50 lbs, as opposed to aquarium salt @ $5 per 1 lb bag).
If measuring volume, 1 Tbsp of rock salt, is not the same as 1 Tbsp o fine grain salt .

 

[twentyleagues]

I watch a lot of his videos so are ehh some are great this was great. Really explained a lot in a short amount of time. Yes the entire thing was 2hrs but all his live streams are and usually cover multiple topics. The salt part was like said 30 to 45 min.
Last week (I think) he went in to how he started the business and what it takes to start and make a buiness run. Also very informative and really applys to a lot of buisnesses, brick and mortor anyway.
Some stuff he says makes me cringe a bit. Like hes somewhat better then others but I'm unsure if thats how he means it. Overall of the YouTubers I think he actually is trying to make it better (the hobby).

 

[RD.]

I don't tend to watch talks like this on youtube. This vid is probably a pretty good example of why. Probably interesting for entry level fish keepers, otherwise meh. I would have preferred to see him promote the use of low cost bulk salt more for entry level fish keepers, vs Fritz A+ that he waved around every few minutes.

 

[islandguy11]

2+ hours long? Really?

Yeah lol, lots of YouTubers going on these 1-2 hour live stream chats nowadays -- it's a way of increasing their revenue, the longer they talk the more 'Super Chats' (paid contributions) they get. And with most of them they spend about half the time just saying 'Hi' to people or going on ad nausea about their YouTube plans.

And yes I did post this mainly for the benefit of newer fish keepers, there's some good sense guidance in the first 30 min. or so.

 

[RD.]

Ok, fair enough. I am so clueless about the ways of the internet money making schemes. lol I have no issue with Cory, and salt has always been my go to when dealing with most ailments. My mantra over the years has always been start small, not hit the fish with everything ya got, even when you don't even know what you're treating for, like many people in this hobby do when it comes to using medications. I watched/skimmed the first 30 minutes, and agreed with a lot of what he said, but he lost me when it came to his promoting of the commercial salt product. That's not making the hobby better. I mean I get that he's in business, and I have no problem with him showing what product he sells in his store, but he waved that friggen Fritz bag around in the first 30 minutes more times than I could keep track of.

 

[islandguy11]

Ok, fair enough. I am so clueless about the ways of the internet money making schemes. lol I have no issue with Cory, and salt has always been my go to when dealing with most ailments. My mantra over the years has always been start small, not hit the fish with everything ya got, even when you don't even know what you're treating for, like many people in this hobby do when it comes to using medications. I watched/skimmed the first 30 minutes, and agreed with a lot of what he said, but he lost me when it came to his promoting of the commercial salt product. That's not making the hobby better. I mean I get that he's in business, and I have no problem with him showing what product he sells in his store, but he waved that friggen Fritz bag around in the first 30 minutes more times than I could keep track of.

Understandable, it's not easy to keep on top of it all to be sure, everybody's trying to make a buck online one way or another and it's continually evolving. For YouTube creators it's kind tricky, esp. when YouTube keeps changing terms for creators -- which is how the current system of patronage, monthly memberships and super chats came about, because many creators lost a huge amount of income after the last big change.

But yeah agreed, waving that Fritz salt around for 30 min. was kind of tasteless overkill, we got the point after first 5 min lol.

 

[twentyleagues]

Ok, fair enough. I am so clueless about the ways of the internet money making schemes. lol I have no issue with Cory, and salt has always been my go to when dealing with most ailments. My mantra over the years has always been start small, not hit the fish with everything ya got, even when you don't even know what you're treating for, like many people in this hobby do when it comes to using medications. I watched/skimmed the first 30 minutes, and agreed with a lot of what he said, but he lost me when it came to his promoting of the commercial salt product. That's not making the hobby better. I mean I get that he's in business, and I have no problem with him showing what product he sells in his store, but he waved that friggen Fritz bag around in the first 30 minutes more times than I could keep track of.

I'm not arguing the promotion part of the fritz but more the why hes promoting it. It's a pure processed form of salt, easy to measure and always the same consistency. He sells and has sold his go to as he said the bulk rock salt also. But measurment with tbs and tps is different because of consistency. He went into price point being the big thing as for the advocating the use of rock salt. But they buy the big bags of rock salt and his wife breaks them down into 1lb bags and they sell that cheaper then the fritz but she's tired of dealing with it so he likes fritz products and that is what they are going to carry from now on out. He said those are the two reasons his wife and trying to get a better measurment of a better consistency product. He told you where to get or what to look for as salt is salt so while he was promoting a certain brand, because he likes it, he also said just go get pure nacl and your good, just remember that not all tbs are created equal. Personally ive used reef salt, I usually had it on hand if I needed it. Luckily I have two really good lfs that I get most of my stock from and they qt and treat most of their fish so there has only been a couple times I have needed to do it. Or like in salt water you go the other way to treat, less salt.
If you skimmed it you probably missed him saying that stuff.

 

[RD.]

I watched enough to lose count how many times he waved the bag around, I didn't skim that much. You can spin his reasons all day long, but to me it was commercial overkill, and didn't come off to me as being all about the hobby. As Duane pointed out, accuracy comes via weight, and one can always test salinity with a hydrometer. He talked about creating a database regarding salinity tolerance among the various species, well that's how real data would/should be collected, not by guess or by golly using teaspoons and tablespoons. I've been using kosher salt (pure NaCl) from the grocery store for forever. People with larger systems should be advised to buy from other bulk sources, such as hardware stores etc that sell bulk "pure" NaCl. Had he waved that kind of advice around even a fraction of the times that he did his new Fritz salt, that would have been what I would consider helping the hobby.