Mollies and aquarium salt.

sean117Ply

My mollies and platies thrived when I added african rift lake salts to the tank, try that?

Oldman47

Rift lake salt will help a lot if you have low pH soft water Sean. It is a mix designed to add minerals to the water and raise the pH. It is unfortunate that it is called salt because that leads to confusion like we are seeing here.
Chemically a salt is any ionic compound that is composed of a metal and a non-metal ion. It is not the stuff that people mean when they tell you to add salt to a tank. My own tap water contains enough salts to register as a TDS of 325 ppm and to have a GH and KH both well over 10 degrees. The fact that those salts are mostly calcium carbonate and similar compounds does not mean that the water does not contain any salts.
The subject of this thread was a perceived need to add salt to an aquarium containing mollies. Worst of all was the idea that somehow sodium chloride, a compound that will only increase TDS but contains no pH buffers or hardness at all, was somehow a good thing for mollies. It is decidedly not a good idea. Even if you choose to use salts with a molly, the rift lake salts are a better match to their needs than aquarium salt but are not as good a match as sea salt.

Guppyluver4ever

Mollies live in freshwater... Yes Im not a veteran , but I have had 5 mollies in my life and they all lived in freshwater and they all lived for about 2 1/2 to 3 years

Mr.Swords and Mollies, do NOT put any salt in your aquarium, they are calles freshwater fish for a reason...

Oldman47

That bit is too extreme for my liking GuppyLuver. I see no reason to add salts to an aquarium but have kept mollies in the past in mildly brackish water with no harm at all. I do not and will not use aquarium salt in place of brackish water for them though.
The original post looked to me like a sales pitch for aquarium salt because too many people have caught on that it is totally a waste of money in most situations. Nitrite poisoning shows some response to aquarium salt in very small doses such as a pinch of salt in a 10 gallon tank and ich treatment with salt in fairly high doses can be effective. These uses would mean a single box of salt for a lifetime for an average aquarist which I am sure would not satisfy the greed of its packagers so we keep reading and hearing that it will cure anything and is needed for all livebearers to be healthy. That kind of misleading merchandising can get my back hairs up for sure.

Swords and Mollies

Kindly care to tell me how you consider that a sales pitch for aquarium salt, ghreed?

Oldman47

Correction Swords and Mollies. What you have been reading elsewhere is what amounts to a sales pitch or possibly just well meaning but misinformed people.