How much salt for an Ariid Catfish

[AU_Arowana-RG]

How much salt would I need to put for an Ariidae Catfish for it to live properly? As in, how much is needed to make it Brackish?

[Silurus]

There is no exact salinity value for brackish water, which encompasses a range of 0.5 to 30 grams of salt per liter.

How much salt you need depends on the species of catfish involved.

[AU_Arowana-RG]

So, it's different for each of the individual species of Ariidae Catfish?

[Silurus]

Not always different, but there are marine, brackish and freshwater species. We need to know exactly which species we are talking about here.

[AU_Arowana-RG]

Freshwater Ariids!? Are you serious? I thought they were only brackish at the minimum!

[Silurus]

There are quite a number of freshwater ariid species around the world (e.g.

Hemiarius

), with a sizable number being found in Australia and New Guinea.

[AU_Arowana-RG]

That sounds too good to be true.

That aside, how much salt would I need for Hexenamichtys Seemani and the most commonly available Ariids?

[sojapat]

Buy a hydrometer and take the SG to around 1010-1012 use marine aquarium salt .
This is then average for brakish water .

[AU_Arowana-RG]

So, how many teaspoons/tablepoons/cups per gallon would that be?

[MatsP]

http://www.theaquariumwiki.com/Salt

Specific gravity is a measure of the weight of a liter of water in kg (or technically, in grams for 1 cubic centimeter/milliliter of water).

You need ROUGLHY 1% => 10 g per liter of salt to achieve 1.010 SG. The exact measure of salt depends on amongst other things the temperature. It is generally better to measure the SG than to try to calculate the exact measure of salt to add. Particularly once the tank is up and running, you will have to top up with fresh water to avoid the SG rising, and when you do water changes, you should aim to have the same SG in the replacement water as the water in the tank. A tiny bit off isn't too bad, but you certainly want to measure the SG, not try to count teaspoons of salt.

--
Mats

[AU_Arowana-RG]

Ok. So how much are the tools for measuring SG?

[Silurus]

Somewhere between 5–10 USD.

[AU_Arowana-RG]

That's affordable.

Thanks for the assist.

[AquaKitty21]

Purchase a Hydrometer to measure the salinity of your aquarium water. I paid 8.99 USD for mine.

[Suckermouth]

I skipped the hydrometer and paid $30 for a refractometer. I haven't ever used a hydrometer, but the refractometer is reliable and easy to use.