hi i'm usually in the saltwater forums but I need to ask a quaestion for my sister. she has a 55 gal tank with cichlids do they require some salt in the water or are they strictly freshwater. someone told here to add kosher salt you get at a grocery store 1 cup a week for three weeks. i know nothing about these fish and couldn't find anything on here so i thought i would ask

They should not require salt.

It almost sounds like they are saying the fish should be treated for something. Is some thing unusual happening?

no they were fine she has had good luck with them. but her boss she works for told her they are supposed to have salt. so she added kosher salt and tonite she called me and said they were acting funny so I told her to do a water change she did about 50 %. when she added the salt she just sprinkled it in there and they went nuts cause i think they thought it was food. and then she said yesterday they didn't come up to eat like they normally do. should she do another water change and how soon

Well I say if what she is doing works well, then she probably shouldn't change it.
But if she wants to add salt try desolving it in water first. The ways I have seen it done before was by using water changes with the specified solution, so it slowly brings up the salt consentrations.

sorry I forgot to adress your question.
Did they eat the salt?
She added 1 cup?
Well I dont know about additional water changes, if they ate the salt you might want to be careful. I don't know a lot about how fish control osmosis in their systems. If they did eat a lot of salt then their system may be out of balance.

I don't know off hand what the best coarse of action would be.

she did a 50 % water change last night and this morning she said they seem to be fine. so shes at work all day so hopefully they are good when she gets home. i told here what you guys said and i think she's gonna leave well enough alone. they've been fine so she's going to do what she's been doing. thanks again for all your help I'll have to find out what kind she has. I know one of them is a big orange one that when it looks at you head on he's got a real funny mouth and eyes

Glad that things appear to have worked out.