Freshwater To Saltwater

[angeli697]

hi. i know that this can be done. i was wanting to convert my 10 gallon freshwater tank into a saltwater tank. i bought all the salt and stuff so that this can be done. i have 4 platies in the tank right now. and from wat i have heard that platies can be converted over to saltwater because they are brackish fish, but you need to do it very slowly. i was just wondering how much salt should i be puting in the at one time. i was thinking like a 1tbsp. like every 30 mins. to and hour. i thought that that might be good enough. well plz leave me input on what you guys think. thank you.

 

[meowzer]

WELL....first welcome to swf
2nd....you can not just pour salt into a FW tank and make it a sw tank......you need to empty the FW...totally sanitize it....and start from scratch
Have you read anything at all about sw tanks? Like the need for Live sand, Live rock...the process of the beginning cycle????

 

[angeli697]

yes i ahve read alot of thing; blogs, forums, and many many threads about sw fish. i was jsut wanting to convert these fish to becoming sw. well i guess the tank is already salt water. i jsut wanted to know how to convert them from freshwater to saltwater in a 5 gallon bucket. how often to add salt for them to be accumlated perfectly.

 

[2quills]

Hi, weclome to the site!
This begs the question...just because something can be done does that mean that it should?
Don't get me wrong, I've read about this being done and believe it can be. But brackish fish means just that...brackish, and not full blown salt. Essentially you would be taking them out of the environment that they are used to living in and puting them in something different. My philosophy is that if they don't actually live or were raised in saltwater than I probably wouldn't do it. But I do know that I needs to be done very gradually if it's going to happen. Not just in a day or two.
And besides...if you want to make a saltwater tank, wouldn't you rather have some real saltwater fish? There are species out there that you could keep in a 10G that are alot more beautiful than platies (no offense) in my opinion.