Usually Kosher salt. Non iodized, and with no anti caking agents. I usually kept 2 tablespoons per 5 gallons. I will forever swear by salting, the only downfall is if you are trying to keep freshwater plants, they do not seem to deal with the salt so well.
We currently use "water softner" salt in our mobile fish exhibit when it's setup for a day program. Is this type of salt OK to use? Would aquarium salt work better? I also have access to a lot of that as well.
I will defintely try to salt the tanks more. It makes sense too because a lot of these new fish are coming from Suisun marsh, where there is regularly fluctuating salinities of 2 to 6 ppt. I gues it was just something I never got into the habit of doing. I will definitely make an effort to utilize it more.
I believe in that stuff. No problems with antibiotic resistance, etc.
Works well for incipient fin rot, etc., common to newly captured fishes. It's relatively cheap too.
I have definitely always used it on my program fish. After they return from a day in the mobile fish exhibit, I dose the system to help prevent infections and deal with any fin fraying that occurs during the netting process.
Does anyone have experience using Melafix and salt together? My thoughts so far from this conversation are to start consistantly using salt in all the quarantine tanks and treating most, if not all, new fish with melafix upon arrival into their quarantine tank. I think I'll also make an effort to salt the main holding system tanks as well. As far as secondary treatments go, I think I will only use maracyn plus in extreme cases or on very hearty fish. I have defintely had great success with it in curing very far gone fin rot on sunfish. I also think after the first week in quarantine (with most likely at least some melafix treatment), I will then begin parasite treatments (probably proform C and/or praziquantel depending on need). Zimmerman's Fish recommended using hydrogen peroxide to me. Does any have any experience or info regarding this? I've found some stuff on the web, but I wanted to try and involve the topic in this thread as well.
Thanks again to everyone who is helping out. My job requres that I know at least a little about A LOT of things. So I definitely find that networking has always been my best ally.