Water salinity and Disease

[aaltayeh]

Hello, I have a 100 gallon tank with clownfish, snails, one cleaner shrimp and one starfish. No coral
To help reduce the chance of disease do you recommend to lower the water salinity. The LFS keeps there salinity down to 1.018-1.020 to reduce disease
Thanks

 

[Azedenkae]

Hello, I have a 100 gallon tank with clownfish, snails, one cleaner shrimp and one starfish. No coral
To help reduce the chance of disease do you recommend to lower the water salinity. The LFS keeps there salinity down to 1.018-1.020 to reduce disease
Thanks

No. I mean for the fish, yes, they can absolutely live at much lower salinities. But your inverts, perhaps not.

 

[Jekyl]

The practices of stores aren't the best. I keep mine at 35 or 1.026

 

[gbroadbridge]

Hello, I have a 100 gallon tank with clownfish, snails, one cleaner shrimp and one starfish. No coral
To help reduce the chance of disease do you recommend to lower the water salinity. The LFS keeps there salinity down to 1.018-1.020 to reduce disease
Thanks

The LFS run lower salinity to reduce their running and maintenance costs, not reduce disease.

If you think about it, a fish that is designed by evolution and nature to swim in the sea, is more likely to suffer diseases when kept in lower salinity than they have evolved for.

 

[Azedenkae]

If you think about it, a fish that is designed by evolution and nature to swim in the sea, is more likely to suffer diseases when kept in lower salinity than they have evolved for.

This is not true.

Just because an organism is adapted to live in a particular environment does not mean the parameters for that environment is optimal for that organism. This is the case for fish: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S153204560100268X, and is also the case with microorganisms: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1095643301004421, and probably the case for really all life. Not saying there are not organisms that are living in environments where it is optimal for them, but that there is no reason to believe an organism's optimal conditions is always the same conditions as that they are found in.

 

[Gtinnel]

I'm not sure if it's actually true but I have always heard that fish do best in water that is around 1.020. I do however agree that a lfs deciding what salinity to keep there fish at is partially based upon financial decisions, but not completely. If the decision was solely about using less salt then they would keep their fish at much lower salinity, which the fish would be able to handle.

If I had a fish only tank I would keep my salinity somewhere around 1.020. I have no idea at what salinity that parasites aren't able to live though. Just from reading when a tank is ran hypo it looks like the salinity is much lower.