HELP!!! it's ICK

On Mar 21, 1:15*pm, "DEM via PetKB.com" u42059@uwe wrote:
THX FOR THE GREAT ADVICE.just ont more quetion , Im use to keeping salt with
my mollies but im always afriad if i put to much how much shuld i put in per
gal .... i also keep black skirt tertras, and redwag platies , i wouldnt want
to harm any of my other fish but my mollies are down to only 2 . all my fish
are i the " tropical community" and need salt but how much is too much? btw
what is "brackish water" i must be stupid to not know but ive hever can
across the term....





ExPat wrote:
umm how about the comunity tank did i take it out with one dose thx 4 the
advice ....
[quoted text clipped - 43 lines]
to be a betta-related virus only), and died.
It's a hard lesson to learn, and even harder when you know better.

Mollies are in that gorup of fish that is sold as freshwater with
advice to add salt. Welltruth be known mollies are a brackish water
fish and they actually do better in full strength sal****er thanthey
do freshwater. They are known ICH magnets, but that affliction goes
away if they are kept in water with a SG of 1.020 or so. Yes, 1.020 is
above what brackish water salinity is considered, and in closer to
full sal****er without corals,, but they do better in salted water for
sure. Ich at that SG is almost non exisitent and they look so much
more better. I routinely kept a school of mmollies at 1.026 sg for use
as live food for my lion fish and snowflake eel. I acclimate lots of
various fish sold as freshwater fish to sal****er and they do so m uch
better. ONe example is the green puffers and spotted and figure eight
puffers. They are great when acclimated and kept in 1.023 or greater
salt water..........I quite keeping mollies and swords mainly due to
their susecptibility of catching ICH.........then I found out about
keeping them in sal****er and its *a totally different story
now........With salta or brackish water you do not have a lot of the
problems encountered with freshwater but do acquire a few new problems
in place of those you did not get, but its still well worth the effort
for keeping them in sal****er over freshwater.

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Brackish water is IIRC water with a salt content usually from about
1.010 to 1.018...This is water that is typicaly found in a lot of bays
etc that has an influx of river or freshwater that empties into them,
and the bays are open to the oceans/ seas etc. Brackish water usually
is found at mouths of rivers etc and outwards where rivers of large
size (like the amazon etc) empty into the ocean. When I kept my
mollies and other fish in brackish or salt water and regualr natural
sea salt water is usually 1.026, but folks run it form about 1.019
(low side for salt water/ marine fish) to the norm of about 1.023 on
average to 1.026 Sg as max high SG. SG = specific gravity and it
requires a refractometer or hydrometer to read the SG of salt or
brackish water. I never used what is called Aquarium Salt sold
typically in the milk carton type containers. I always use synthetic
sea salts which can be bought in bags that make up 5 gal of SW at a
time to buckets which will make 160 gal at a time or most times I
collect the water directly from the gulf of mexico. There is a lot of
essential elements in synthetic sea salt as compared to so called
aquarium salt, and if the fish need synthetic or not I oculd not
tellyou but I do no that corals etc do so I always used the synthetic
and kiled two birds with one stone. I find it absurd that most lfs do
not know that puffers, mollies etc really need to be ina brackish
environment for them to thrive and do well or else they really are
doomed. Its no wonder mollies and such get ICH like they do, its not
the correct environement ina totally salt free or less than brackish
water environment for them.