Acclimation

[intarsiabox]

I don't so much as drip as just pour a cup of tank water into the bag after floating for 10 min then float for another five.

[Kryptic4L]

i lost so much stuff doing it the slow and steady way. I finally said f-it.

Now its toss bag in, when i remeber that i have something floating i go back open it toss in some "prime" plus some tank water. wait a few and chuck him in.


When doing some research on why i was losing so much crap right from the store, Apparently the theory goes, bag water is dirty once the bag is open it gets toxic fast. thus the prime.

most store water is 0.21 from what i have seen, My water is 0.24 thus the short transitional phase.

Fish have been going in the tank on my last few purchases better then any i have had in the past they seem to skip that getting comfy stage and seem to have some pep in their step.

[stephengammage]

All i do is float the bag after 10 min add 1 shot of water wait 5 min add another cup wait 5 add to tank. This eliminated losses to my more sensitive corals

[mark]

Originally Posted by stephengammage

All i do is float the bag after 10 min add 1 shot of water wait 5 min add another cup wait 5 add to tank. This eliminated losses to my more sensitive corals

+1

[asylumdown]

I chose 'my own method', which consists of removing fish/coral/invert from the bag it came in, then placing it in whatever tank it's going in to next. If it's a fish from one of two stores in town that I know have whacked out salinity, I might check the salinity and think "hmmm, that's pretty high/low", then proceed to dump the fish in to the vessel with the correct salinity, but most times I don't check so I don't feel the need to clench for the first 5 minutes the fish is in the QT tank.

If it's a coral, I take it out of the bag it came in, pry/cut/smash it off whatever base or rock it came on, use surgical tools to scrape away any portion that's dead or has algae growing on it, drop it in a bucket of my tank water, then proceed to submerge it in caustic, toxic chemicals that kills anything with a pulse and a few things that don't.

If it's a hard shelled invert like a snail (but only if it has a trap door than closes completely), I will sometimes take them to the sink, irritate them until they close right up, then aggressively brush them off under running tap water using an old tooth brush, holding my thumb tightly over the opening so that freshwater never actually touches the trap door. If it's got an algae growing on it that is not currently in my tank, I will follow that up with a brushing with dilute bleach. I follow the same procedure for exposed LPS skeletons that I can't break off without harming the coral, though with much, much greater care to not get fresh water or bleach on any actual tissue. Once rinsed, in to the tank they go.

I've never lost a fish, invert, or a coral doing it this way, so I'm probably going to keep doing it. Some might argue it's not really an acclimation procedure however.

[monza]

Simplified drip method like most but then into a QT. Six weeks min. for fish a week for corals dipping them daily if I find the time.
I'm surprised at how many of you don't use a QT.

[Samw]

I've lost entire batches of trochus snails when I didn't acclimate long enough. Other existing snails and livestock in my tank were fine. Just the new ones died over a few days. The reason I think it was due to not acclimating long enough was because I bought more snails from the same store later and acclimated those ones longer and they all survived. This has happened several times before where all new snails died over a few days so I'm suspecting that it was from not acclimating long enough. I also lost a few linkia starfish but who knows if that was because the store didn't acclimate them long enough or if it was me, since starfish take a while before they break down. I like to acclimate starfish over many hours.

[Kait]

I haven't put anything overly sensitive in my tank. I've always done the bag in, wait 10 minutes, cup of water, wait 5 more, as others have stated. I've had carpet surfers and others that have only lasted a few weeks (shrimp, both of them). So I figure that my losses aren't really because of my acclimation procedures.

I've never lost a coral, although one would probably say that I have never bought anything fancy… just zoas and then had a few candy canes and frogspawn donated.

[Proteus]

I check the salinity of store water and depending on the fish.
Most ofthe time its a float the bag but if salts off ill drip

[wreck]

float the bag dump fish into net and then into tank.