What is the best way to start a salt water environment in a tank for salt water fish?

Answer 1

Prepare your tank and place all decorations.

Buy some synthetic sea salt, a salinity gauge, some shrimp from the grocery store, dechlorinater, and of course a test kit. A standard fresh water kit will suffice unless you plan to keep very exotic plants and animals. If you plan on keeping corals, then buy the reef test kit.

Get your salinity to 1.025 (with synthetic marine salt of course). Let sit for 1- 3 days and recheck salinity. If salt levels are ok, then put 2-3 shrimp from the seafood department of your local grocery store in the tank and let it start decaying ( these should be replaced roughly every five days to keep the ammonia going ).An alternative to this is to buy fish that are very cheap and you won't miss when they are dead. Every day check your ammonia levels. When you start getting ammonia then check your nitRITE levels. When nitrite levels reach zero, and stay there for say 4 days, start checking nitRATE levels.

Normally you can figure on putting fish in a tank 1-1.5 months after you set it up. Any sooner and you are jeopardizing whatever wildlife you put in the tank.

Ammonia,nitrite, and nitrate are toxic/unhealthy for fish. Ammonia comes from decaying poop and food, and is VERY toxic for your fish. It will burn their gills and not allow them to breathe. Nitrite prohibits the exchange of oxygen into their bloodstream through the gills, and is the next step in the nitrogen cycle. It is the byproduct of the bacteria you are growing in the tank that eats the ammonia. Nitrate is not as toxic for your fish but is deadly for most invertebrates and most corals. It is the byproduct of the bacteria that eat the nitrites in your tank. Unfortunately, the cycle pretty well stops here. Without truly deep sand beds and\or specialized filters and such, the only way to get rid of nitrates is with water changes.What you are trying to do is establish the nitrogen cycle in your tank so that the ammonia your fish produces is easily and very quickly converted to something a lot less deadly.

Your test kit readings should be:

Ammonia = 0

Nitrite = 0

Nitrate = < 20

before you add fish. And this will not happen in 1-2 weeks I can assure you. If it does it is most certainly only temporary and you should not rush out and buy fish.

And maybe this part will be considered spamming a site but I must say without them I would be out of roughly $1200 worth of fish, but if you require further help type into Google "wet web media" and browse their questions. There is more information there than you can read in 3 years about what to do with anything that requires water to live in or close by it.

Good luck and may the tank bring you all the enjoyment that my 9 tanks bring me.