Is there an aquarium
FAQ for newbies on this site, if so where is it?
Your looking at it.
If your someone who has been on other web forums reguardless of subject Im sure you have heard people say "use search" or something to that effect. THis is truly one of the best and fastest ways to get answers to common questions. If a search turns up nothing helpful then posting your question will allow others down the road to search and hopefully find your topic question to help them.
Now on to your question. You say you have a new tank with freshwater in it. Do you have freshwater fish in this tank or is this truly an empty tank with 'freshwater' in it? If its the later then its alot easier than you think. If you have freshwater fish then of course first yoru gonna have to find a home for those fish.
If this is a freshwater tank with nothing in it but water then you can go out to the
LFS and get the approprate amount of salt (they sell them in box's/bags/buckets depending on how many
gal of salt mix you want). Get a hydromoter also so you can verify the salinity of the water. Usually us salty folks enjoy a different substrate than that of the freshwater community so you will need to get some new substrate if you dont want to use the substrate you have. A skimmer is something that you can benifit from aswell.
Slowly add the salt to your tank with a measureing cup. Add 2 cup per 5
gal of tank capacity. SLowly pour this salt in and try to shake/spread it out so the salt can evently disolve. Having the water up to room temp or lightly higher (80F) as well as having a good amount of water movement via powerheads will aid in the salt disolving. After a few hours check your salinity with the hydromoter and add more salt if needed to get to a level of 1.020.
You now have saltwater. Let this run for at least 24 hours before starting your cycle with a dead raw shrimp.
