Bronze Corys & Salt

[bettasbest]

Hello All,

I recently purchased a serority tank for my female bettas and have so far had it set up for just over 2 weeks monitoring ammonia and ph levels- i took a water sample into the aquarium(auburn) and the customer service guy told me my ammonia was zero and ph was a little high 7.6 but once i added some fish this would go down. I really wanted to add guppies but he strongly recommended against it and suggested i get 2 corys to go with the fighters.. i have the 2 corys home and then seem really happy in the tank(bettas not added yet) but i have read that corys dont like salt, but bettas prefer some salt in their water. I have some plants in the tank, pink babies tears, something that looks similar to coboba but looks slightly darker and bushier and 1 other type of light green leafy plant.

I plan on adding IAL with my bettas also.

My questions are:

Do i need salt with my bettas?

Will the bettas do better With salt?

Do corys like salt? If NOT then should i take them back to the pet store?

Will my plants and Malaysian Trumpet Snails mind a little salt in the water?

Thanks!

Julie

[dami3nz]

salt is used to help prevention of disease buh u could raise the temp slightly as well to 26 degrees i havent put my fighter in my community tank it is quite crowded atm also i have read that the fighter may attack other brightly colored fish like the platy i have. that is probably the reason why your lfs recommended against getting guppies. i have put salt into the community tank though as it is better for my platy my cory seem to be fine but they hide alot but recently they have come out more

[hobbygodz]

Hi Julie, I use 1 teaspoon of rock salt per 10 liters of (dechlored and aged) aquarium water. I use this same water for my bettas, killies and corys alike. My corys are healthy, active and well into their third year. The corys share their tank with a female betta. They previously lived with a male long-fin betta for a couple of years. I use IAL in all 20+ of my tanks, but don't over-do it as IAL can promote algael blooms. All of my tanks have snails - pond, red ramshorns and gold mystery snails. Sorry I don't know about MTS and their salt tolerance as I've never had them. I definitely think the salt reduces the snails tendency to proliferate - not a bad thing at all. One thing to be very careful of when using salt is to allow for evaporation so that you do not end up with an ever increasing salinity level in your tank. The easist way to keep salt levels accurately in check is to mark the tank water level with a marking pen when the tank is full. Before each (salted) water change add unsalted water to top up to your marked water line. Then proceed with your water change and back up to the line. Doing this will maintain the salinity level in your tank. A ph of 7.6 is fine, my tanks all run at around that. Lots of plants is good too as they help to remove nitrates and ammonia from the water. I also add a couple of clean shells to each tank to act as a PH buffer.

Hope this answers most of your questions Julie, Cheers, Brad. :)

Edited June 18, 2010 by Brad

[bettasbest]

Thanks Dami3nz

And Brad thanks heaps that info was just what i was looking for!

I have aquarium salt which i assume would be very similar to what you use?

I was thinking i would put 1 IAL about the size of your hand in my 43L, do you think that would be ok?

The guy made it seem like 7.6 was slightly too high(but not a big issue) glad to know yours is similar.

My tank has a bunch of plants in it at the moment, 3 different types - do you think they will be ok with the salt?

I was gonna add about 4 small-ish shells to my tank but the guy said to add max 2 as this can hike up the ph - the shells were probly between the size of a 20c-50c piece at their maximum width - do you think that would be ok? Also i bought them from a store but i want to make sure they are clean before adding them -how do you recommend i do this?

Thanks again Brad!

Julie

[delyall]

I heard you need to have at least 4 corys together, so Id recommend getting another two corys.. theyre amazing to watch Also to clean the shells, Id boil them for 5-10 minutes, its what I do when I want to add some feature rocks in my tanks :P

[gulp]

I never add salt and my bettas are doing perfect plants dont tollerate salt very well so dont over do it. Have you tried the search feature and read through the library? There is a heap of information on these sorts of things, goodluck.

[bettasbest]

Hi gulp

Thanks i've decided to give the salt a miss for now as i have a bunch of plants which i dont want to start dieing off, plus ive heard unless you add a certain amount it won't have any effect anyhow. I haven't used salt religiously since ive had my bettas and they have been fine also i just thought, from what i have read, that salt was a key ingredient to betta health and longevity, but apparently lots of people keep healthy bettas without salt. I will see how they go i added the first 2 females in today with the 2 corys and they seem to be getting on awesome the two girls who were previously in a divided tank swam together for a while before they went to explore on their own

Thanks everyone for your helpful advice

and delyall you are right the corys are lots of fun to watch and very cute i originally was there to snap a few pics of my bettas and watch how they got along but the corys kept getting my attention!! and they seem very happy as their little duo but thanks for the info! :)

[kandeecane]

I have a duo of Albino Corydoras and they seem to be doing fine... Though in saying that I also have 4 Panda and 4 Habrosus Cories in the same tank...

I found salt hasn't affected my plants or cories but it has helped when my fish have gotten a little bit of infected fins! Salt really helps them grow their fins back. So does IAL.

I use Aqua Master's Aquarium Salt. Using 1 Tbsp (20g) per 20L. The fish are doing great with it in the tanks so I keep it in there just incase it is doing something good. I also found in my sorority, where I have a tonne of plants, 2 BN (And babies now), 7 Corydora Julii, 11 Neon Tetra, 7 Harlequin Rasboras and unfortunately a small plague of snails that the salt helped when they were dying off. :)