So there is a disease on aquarium fish called the white spot disease (sometime called Ich disease). It make fish to die very quickly. One way to treat that disease is to add salt to the fish tank. Something like 1 table spoon per gallons. Now I have done this many times to treat fish disease and it very effective. But one thing I don’t understand is that. Given that all my fish are fresh water fish, how come they can still survive just fine in salt water?. Like for months already
In: Biology
How can you survive breathing in car exhaust? Or eating plastic?
The way to survive bad things is concentration and dilution. 1 part per 100 is much worse than 1 per million or billion. The fungus or whatever pathogen is smaller and is affected more quickly than the fish.
It’s like chemotherapy. You’re trying to kill the cancer before you kill the host. But eventually, you will kill the host if you’re not careful.
Simple answer: They only have to tolerate it for a short time.
Longer answer: It’s not as salty as ocean water, nor is it the same type of salt. Ocean water has a salinity (salt concentration) of 3.5%. Your tank should have a salinity of less than 1%.
Seawater is made up of many different salts, such as NaCl (sodium chloride), MgCl2 (magnesium chloride), MgSO4 (magnesium sulfate), and KCl (potassium chloride).
Aquarium salt, which should only be used for a SHORT amount of time, is pure NaCl. If you use it for too long, your fish will die.
https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/aquarium-salt-for-sick-fish
The very short answer is that most freshwater fish have a general tolerance for certain levels of salt, above the tolerance that ichthyophthirius multifiliis, the parasite that causes ich, has.
Even tiny concentrations of salt will kill off the parasite, but a little bit is ok. Fish broadly have a mucus lining that protects them from environmental contamination (like salt) to a certain degree.
In the same way an antibiotic will cure a bacterial infection but leave you mostly ok. Your body just has a higher tolerance for it than the bacteria does. Now, too much salt will absolutely kill your fish, just like too much of anything will kill anything.
But a little bit of salt isn’t going to kill most fresh water fish. There’s natural salts in riverbeds and floors that gets stirred up into naturally flowing water all the time. So most of your freshwater fish will be fine with a little bit of it.
it just happens to be *really* good at killing ich, and the toxic threshold for ich is below the toxic threshold for most fish.
You’ll die if you drink salt water, but like, not instantly if you drink any amount of salt in water ever
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