Can I use Marine Salt with my African Cichlid tank?
You can use a marine salt mix like Instant Ocean or Reef Crystals with Rift Lake cichlids. A tablespoon per 5 gallons would be fine. Be sure that you never salt any top off water. If your tank loses an inch due to evaporation, the water to replace that should be salt free, If you remove five gallon of tank water, but have to add ten back in due to evaporation, only add one tablespoon of salt. Water evaporates but salt and most minerals stay. The salt mix has buffers and calcium in it that hardens the water and raises the pH, perfect for rift lake cichlids and most live bearing species. It works much better than “Aquarium salt” which is really a salt byproduct I would never have in my house since I worked for years in the salt industry and know what kind of contaminants can be in that product. It is actually the buffers and calcium that benefit the cichlids. The salt does nothing much for them either way. Marine Salt mix is very different from sea salt, which is a product not much diffe
