Thanks Nick,
I clicked on the Silva 16s/18s link:
Which was found on the QIIME Data Resources
and downloaded the large Silva_132_release.zip file which contains loads of stuff, but no Fasta files.
Instead there are .fna files, which typically contain FASTA files, but apparently not readable ones by my prompts.
I managed to import these using a manifest based on my metadata earlier, but I doubt the same trick will work here since I don't have metadata for these sequences. Or maybe it would?
It looks like the same issue came up in this post, but I don't think it was resolved.
The author was taking the same approach as me and likely many others, which is to insert our files into the moving pictures tutorial for as many steps as possible before retreating to the forum.