Hey! New to saltwater, freshwater master, new to this forum!

So my name is Miles and i've been doing freshwater planted tanks for about 3 or so years and yesterday I decided it was time for a change, I tore down my old 20 gallon long planted setup with T5's and put all the inhabitants into a ten and a 5 gallon tank, cleaned out the tank entirely, then went out and bought a salinity meter, salt, and 2 bags of marine sand from petco, I would have bought more but they only had 2 and I HATE buying things at petco but I didn't even know I had a lfs until a few days ago but its not that local, it's like a 25 min drive for me while petco is a 5 min drive, I just bought those things to make it so I couldn't turn back. I haven't added salt to the setup yet and am just letting the dust settle from the new sand, i'll add salt possibly tomorrow or wednesday cause i'm taking a dive class and I go past my lfs on the way to it so I can pick up a bit of live sand, some live rock, and some base rock. Looking forward to having problems and asking you all for help!
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Welcome to 3reef! I would advise doing lots of research and possibly buying a book sw is much different from fw. Good luck and welcome aboard.

 

Welcome to 3Reef!

Make sure you get your specific gravity to 1.024 before adding your live rock and live sand!

Its better to mix the salt water outside the aquarium, especially if u have sand in it already.

 

welcomes to the family miles..and yeah do your research..and the most important thing is to take it very slow and try and have patience, its the hardest thing to do and every reefer will agree with that..

 

Welcome to 3 reef, Miles Dudley

Steve

 

make sure you buy a quality ro-di unit from the start. It will save you alot of headaches in the long run

 

Welcome new reefer ro/di and a tds meter is recommended. Piece of advice don't go to cheap on equipment. You don't need a whole lot of LR to seed your tank. Reefcleaners.org has base rock for a decent price with nice rocks.

 

Welcome to the salt world...
I made the jump from FW to SW a few years ago. My first mistakes was patience, my second was knowledge. If you can, I and everyone here would advise to not use tap water. Tap water is the devil... Good luck, the people here are great when it comes to help. Also you might want to post up your general location, you will be surprised how many be neighborers are reefers.

 

getting that salt to mix inside the tank is going to be impossible to do...i suggest draining the water back out....start with new RO/DI and mix OUTSIDE the tank... If you mix inside the tank...with sand.. 1. it will stir the sand really bad. 2. salt will get into the sand and wont dissolve as it should...meaning ur salinity cant be considered stable...its an honest mistake...but trust me, start over

 

and make sure ur not adding live sand to fresh water...it will defeat the purpose of "live"