Salt to Fresh Conversion

[John Lee]

Hello everyone, I am new here, but not really new to the fresh water world. I grew up freshwater, and in the past few years have gone to salt. But now I have been intrigued with Aquascape and wish to convert my salt tank to fresh. Has anyone had any experience with this and if so, I would love to pick your brain awesome particulars that are swimming around in my head right now. No pun intended. Thank you.

[nabokovfan87]

I had talked with caribsea about this and ran into the "nope, totally not possible". 

Then I actually learned a lot about both the use of salt in freshwater and actual saltwater tanks....

I'm not an expert by any means but this would be my method.

1. Use white vinegar to clean everything off in the tank (flips aquatics has a video where they add it at a certain ratio to clean a tank)

2. Repeat that same process with the tank full and use bleach. Run all of your pumps and equipment both times so that you can remove salt from that equipment and then sanitize everything.

3.  Rinse it yet again, let it air dry. Then fill it up. Then you would just use a big dose of dechlorinator and let it run for a week or two.

4. Change water, rinse and repeat.

Note. A lot of saltwater substrates have coral and that might over buffer your water. I would often suggest getting rid of the substrate unless you're specifically using an inert sand. If that's the case, then I would go ahead and use bleach, rinse, etc.  When you have the tank full of bleach, use a rake or tongs or your hands and massively disturb the substrate.