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Can You Put Himalayan Salt In A Freshwater Aquarium?

Over the last couple of years, himalayan salt has been touted as some sort of miracle cure for a wide range of common health issues with freshwater fish with a large number of people on social media commonly recommending himalayan salt for a range of problems.

This has resulted in a large number of people within the fish keeping community reaching out and asking for advice on if they really should be adding himalayan salt to their freshwater aquarium.

Although himalayan salt can offer some benefits to freshwater fish with a range of health problems, there is almost always a better treatment option available due to how difficult it is to correctly dose himalayan salt to avoid side effects.

Increasing the salinity of your freshwater tank is easy with himalayan salt so the majority of people should usually avoid even trying it due to the risk simply being too high.

With there being so many people on social media recommending himalayan salt as a treatment for so many problems commonly found in fish, we know that a large number of people new to fish keeping will end up using himalayan salt to treat their fish.

This is why we have decided to publish this article going over using himalayan salt in your freshwater tank as well as what to do if you have already added the himalayan salt to your tank.

Can You Put Himalayan Salt In A Freshwater Aquarium?

You can put himalayan salt into your freshwater aquarium to try and treat some common health issues with your freshwater fish, mainly ich but the risk is usually much higher than the potential reward.

The majority of the ailments that himalayan salt is commonly recommended as a treatment for have much better treatments available without the potential downsides of using himalayan salt in your freshwater tank.

The most common problem that we see time and time again with trying to add himalayan salt to your freshwater aquarium is the dosing measurements.

It is very difficult to dose the himalayan salt to a level where it is able to offer any benefit to your fish to actually treat their ailments without increasing the salinity levels of your tank to a harmful level.

The trace minerals in himalayan salt can also cause potential problems with your water parameters too adding more risk to the treatment.

Considering that different ailments in your fish will require different amounts of himalayan salt and different sized aquariums require more and more himalayan salt to offer any benefit it is just far too difficult to reliable use himalayan salt as a treatment for your freshwater fish.

This is why it is so common to see people on social media asking for help after adding far too much himalayan salt to their own tank resulting in them having a bunch of problems.

Why Do Some People Put Himalayan Salt In A Freshwater Aquarium?

The most common ailments in freshwater that people try to treat with himalayan salt include ich, gill enflaming, osmotic stress, parasites, and abrasions.

Himalayan salt has also been shown to be able to irritate the skin of fish to help encourage the production and formation of their natural slime coating after having their slime removed.

Due to the wide range of common ailments that himalayan salt can technically help treat in freshwater fish, many people do tend to use it as their default recommendation when people ask for help.

This is why there are so many people on social media who recommend himalayan salt for such a wide range of problems in fish but as we covered in the section above, there are too many downsides to make it a reliable treatment.

In our opinion, if your fish are having any of those problems then something like Pimafix will do much better than himalayan salt with Pimafix also being much easier to dose while having less potential downsides too. If your fish do have ich then you can use a specialist product such as super ich cure to reliably treat the ich breakout rather than having to try himalayan salt.

Many people simply try to increase the water temperature of their aquarium up to around 85 degrees provided it is suitable for your fish as most ich strains are not able to survive at higher temperatures.

What Should You Do If You Have Used Himalayan Salt In Your Freshwater Aquarium?

If you have already added himalayan salt to your freshwater aquarium then you should monitor the health of your fish while tracking your water parameters as well as the salinity levels in your tank.

You should ideally be trying to do a large water change broken down into three stages spread over the course of a week too if your salinity levels are high but this is not suitable for everyone.

We constantly see people failing to realize that himalayan salt has a large number of trace minerals in it that can end up affecting the water parameters of your tank.

The majority of people realize that there is a risk to the salinity levels of your tank but even experienced fish keepers often overlook the importance of monitoring your water parameters if you do use himalayan salt in your tank.

Ideally, you will be trying to space your water changes after adding himalayan salt to your tank out over a number of days to prevent drastic changes to the water but sometimes this is unavoidable.

This will come down to you and the water parameters/salinity levels that you detect in your tank and the risks to the fish that you keep.

In some situations, you may have to do a full or at least majority water change and although this does pose a risk to your fish, it is usually the safer option if you have added too much himalayan salt to your tank.

Conclusion

That brings our article going over using himalayan salt in a freshwater aquarium to an end. We hope that we have been able to help you understand the risks of adding himalayan salt to your tanks and we really would recommend that you avoid using this treatment if possible and go with an alternative. The risks of using himalayan salt is just too high for us to be comfortable recommending it to our readers and many people new to fish keeping constantly make mistakes when trying to use himalayan salt in their tanks that make the situation worse.