Treating Goldfish With Rotting Tails With Salt

Q. Dear Mermaid, my goldfish have split and rotten tails. Should I use table salt to treat their problematic tails?

There is two parts to your question.

First of all, salt, be it table salt or sea salt or aquarium salt, is used to treat tank water, not sick fish. Two possible causes of your goldfish with split and rotting tails could be attacks from other aggressive fish in the tank or excessively frequent changing of water that results in “chlorine disease.”

If you are treating the tank water, try using aquarium saline and malachite green instead of table salt. I strongly would NOT recommend using table salt or sea salt as the way to treat your tank water although I’ve heard many aquarists (who swear by it) used them to treat their tank water without any adverse effect.

Basically table salt is aquarium salt plus other additives (not suitable to fish). Unless you are able to find PLAIN table salt that contains ONLY sodium chloride (aquarium salt) in your local supermarket, please avoid using any regular table salt to treat your tank water.

We are talking here about Sodium Chloride with symbol NaCl, which is the main chemical in table salt. Table salt also usually contains small amounts iodine and calcium silicate. The iodine prevents goiter in humans that eat the table salt, and the calcium silicate prevents the table salt from caking. Read more here.

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