Steps

[pufferpuggirl]

In all honesty, I'm not sure there is any benefit to doing it the way I do it. It's just how I feel comfortable doing things, just my way.

[KorrepZ]

so i should first cycle in fresh water and then once im done my fishless cycle in 10-15 days i should start adding .002 salt every week?

This is how I have done it yeah.

One of the benifits i can think of is that you wanna start with your fish in fresh water as most petstores have the brackish fish in fresh water. So to not throw them from fresh into brackish in an instant I started with fresh water and slowly upped the salt with .002 per week so the fish could slowly adjust along with it

[Pufferpunk]

The benefit is if the fish is being kept in BW at the shop you are purchasing it from (a real rarity). Then there is a very short acclimation time (just for temp), rather than a slow drip acclimation back to your FW, if the fish was doing well in the LFS in BW.

[Iliveinazoo]

What's the benefit in cycling fresh before changing to brackish?

And that's the way I learned to do it and I'm more comfortable that way

LOL!

Ahh, LFS's, don't you just love them.....

I'm fairly lucky that I have 2 LFS's around me that keep there brackish fish at SG1.005. My problem with both of them is that they buy in loads of GSP's (always just the GSP's?...) so after a couple of days there's a couple of really well fed ones, lots of skinny ones and a couple of half eaten ones on the bottom!

Anyway, I digress

[bigfatfish]

I don't think it really matters if you cycle FW or BW. As has been said, depends where you are getting your fish & what they are kept in. Mine are in BW already, so made sense to cycle BW.