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How salt baths work and how they work

Many goldfish are sometimes treated with salt to prevent disease or as a remedy for illness, but many people are not sure what to do or how to do it. In this article, we would like to explain about salt baths.

What is a salt bath?

Salt bath is a method of adding salt to freshwater to increase the salt concentration and inhibit pathogens. Salt baths have long been widely used to treat freshwater fish in ponds and aquariums. Some of the benefits of salt baths are listed below.

Easy to obtain and low cost

Can be used in conjunction with medications

The first advantage is that they are easy to obtain and inexpensive.Coarse salt is used for the salt bath. However, if salt is not available, it can be substituted with salt used for cooking, so there is no special requirement to prepare it.Moreover, when it comes to medicines for ornamental fish, effective medicines differ depending on the disease, so you have to do your research, and the price is a bit high, starting at around 1,000 yen. In comparison, salt costs only a few hundred yen, so it is very wallet-friendly. The second advantage is that it can be used in combination with medicine. If,If you think your goldfish is sick and want to go to the store to buy medicine, but you are too busy with work and do not have much time, you can give your goldfish a salt bath to control the bacteria and then go to the store later to buy medicine specifically for the disease and put the medicine directly into the tank where the salt bath is taking place.Salt baths are simply fresh water turned into diluted seawater, so most ornamental fish medications can be used on saltwater fish as well, so they can be used during salt baths.

How to take a salt bath

About salinity

In salt baths, the most important thing to keep in mind is the salt concentration.It is recommended that the salt concentration be kept at "0.51 TP3T".The table below shows how much 0.5% is. If you want to put in a little more, freshwater fish can tolerate up to "3%" salinity, so as long as you can keep it below 3%, you should be fine. However, we do not recommend keeping them in for a long period of time.

Capacity of the tank and the amount of salt input

Width × Depth × Height (mm) quantity or volume of water input
450 x 240 x 300 30L 150g
600×300×360 60L 300g
750 x 400 x 450 120L 600g
900 x 450 x 450 160L 800g
1000 x 1000 x 1000 1000L(1t) 5kg

What is the right salt for salt baths?

salt_img1

Any salt can be used for salt baths. However, there are many different kinds of salt. Among them,Coarse salt is the best salt for salt baths. The first reason coarse salt is better is that it takes longer to dissolve in water.The slow dissolution of the salt in the water creates areas of high and low salt concentration in the water. This causes the sicker goldfish to go in the direction of the higher salt concentration. If you see a goldfish that you have overlooked, you can look out for it. Second, the salt that is generally used for cooking and other purposes is a type of salt called refined salt. Refined salt contains magnesium carbonate and other ingredients to prevent the salt from hardening during the production process. Coarse salt, however, is unrefined and thus remains natural. As mentioned in the above section, what you need to be careful about when bathing in salt is the salt concentration. The amounts in the table above are for coarse salt. So, if you use fine salt for cooking, you need to add 20~30% more. Then, from a cost-effective point of view, coarse salt is better.

How Salt Baths Work

How Salt Baths Work

Salt baths increase the concentration of salt in the water. Then,Goldfish have a body structure that allows them to adjust osmotic pressure when the salt concentration in their bodies differs from the salt concentration in the water. Thanks to this structure, goldfish can tolerate a small amount of salt concentration.Unfortunately, the pathogens that cause diseases in goldfish do not have the ability to regulate osmotic pressure that goldfish have. Therefore, when the salt concentration in the water is higher than the salt concentration in the body, the water in the body is taken away from the body and the goldfish die. Therefore, salt baths can help control the amount of bacteria.

In Nature

Originally by,When carp and other fish in the natural world are sick, the salinity naturally increases as they move downstream from the upper reaches of the river and get closer to the ocean. Then, at a certain position, the carp will stop descending and stop moving. In this way, the bacteria that made them sick naturally decrease, and when the number of bacteria decreases to some extent, they move upstream again and return to the place where they usually sleep to boost their immunity and cure the disease.

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