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Salt Meter

dean

Member
Joined
6 Apr 2012
Messages
1,541
Location
Warrington, Cheshire
Hi Clever People
I’ve got some Ranchu goldfish coming and I need to measure the salt levels to keep it at 0.3% for the duration of the 4 week quarantine period. The easiest would be with a salt / salinity meter

Can anyone recommend a brand or model ?


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I don't think most measure such low specific gravities as they are mostly aimed at the marine market. If you know the volume of the tank you should be able to work out how much salt to add and it won't go anywhere unless you do a water change. Again if you take water out, as long as you know how much you have removed, you can work out how much to add back in.
You can be quite accurate doing this and a slight swing either way shouldn't cause any problems, most people just seem to chuck a rough amount in and it seems to work.

You would need 3 grams per liter so a pair of reasonable scales is easier to find.
 
Hannah and lots of other manufacturers do low level salt meters
They vary in price greatly from cheaper imports at less than £20 upto very expensive ones over £500 so was looking for recommendations


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Hi all,
don't think most measure such low specific gravities
They vary in price greatly from cheaper imports at less than £20 upto very expensive ones over £500 so was looking for recommendations
It is sort of Apples & Pears again, what @mort is saying is that most hydrometers or refractometers aren't going to work very well in a low specific gravity solution, but you can use a conductivity meter, which I assume are the meters you've been looking at? Because it is such a lot of salt any conductivity meter will do, including the £20 one.

Conductivity is a linear scale all the way from <"DI water to full strength seawater">.

I know 0.3% is quoted as the right amount of salt for Goldfish quarantine, but when I say it is a lot of salt, I really mean it.

If you want to use conductivity? The 1000 microS (1 milliS) conductivity standard solution is 491 mg/L NaCl.

I'm going to call 0.491g "0.5g", so your 0.3% salt solution (3g in a litre) is ~ 6 miiliS = 6000 microS and ~3000 ppm TDS (you use 0.5 as the conversion factor when you know the salt is NaCl).

cheers Darrel
 
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While we’re on the subject of salt can anyone debunk a myth that’s been around years

Is the anti cacking agent used in table salt bad for fish or is it just complete rubbish ?

For instance a well known brand sells “aquarium salt” which is sea salt, but it flows freely too

Koi retailers sell salt by the sack and that brand of salt uses Sodium ferrocyanide as its anti cacking agent

So they contradict each other !

I presume table salt or salt with any anti cacking agent in it is safe to use as the amount of the chemical (Sodium ferrocyanide) would be so small to cause any problems?
 
Hi all,
Is the anti cacking agent used in table salt bad for fish or is it just complete rubbish ?
Yes, it is rubbish, the anti caking agents are either magnesium carbonate (MgCO3) or sodium hexaferrocyanide (Na4Fe(CN)6), but neither of the is very soluble, you can also ignore the iodized bit (should there be one), the amount of iodine added is neither here nor there.
This has led to confusion with some people anxious about the safety of these additives because free cyanide and hydrogen cyanide are highly toxic. Hexacyanoferrates (or ferrocyanides) are not toxic; they are chemically-stable metal complexes and completely non-toxic. To make the point, one study gave rats a solution of 20,000 mg/L ferric ferrocyanide in drinking water for up to a total intake of 3,200 mg/kg (bw)/day for 12 weeks and the rats showed no signs of toxicity
From <"The great salt debate">.

Personally I'd be more concerned by keeping the fish in that salt concentration.
I'm going to call 0.491g "0.5g", so your 0.3% salt solution (3g in a litre) is ~ 6 miiliS = 6000 microS and ~3000 ppm TDS (you use 0.5 as the conversion factor when you know the salt is NaCl).

cheers Darrel
 
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