How long should I acclimate my new fish?

Jspigs

Jspigs

There is always more to learn
Aug 5, 2009
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My 10 gallon tank is finally cycled

How long should I acclimate my new neon tetras for?

I know I need to periodically put a tiny bit of tank water into the bag the neons are in while floating the bag in the tank but how long should I wait between adding more water to the bag?

Also how long should I do this for?
 
30 minutes to an hour? i guess until the water in the bag is more or less the same as the water in the tank (same pH, temp, etc)
 
I looked up on google and decided that every ten minutes I would take some of the water from the bag and put it in my dirty water bucket then replace that water with some of the tank water.

I just did my last water transfer using the process described above and I am now waiting ten minutes.
 
That is what I do. I try to take an hour of so to complete the process. Ideally you want to net them out so as to prevent any chance of contaminating the tank water, but that creates additional stress for the fish. I just gently pour them in.
 
Adapting to significantly different GH/KH takes several hours. Adapting to changes in pH takes a few minutes. Personally I don't think this sort of acclimation is all that useful, and it's positively lethal if the fish have been in the bag for more than a few hours. I prefer to get the temperature matched, and then get them out of the ammonia laced travelling water and into the tank. The QT tank should be ready prepared with water of the same GH/KH as theirs if it's likely to be signficantly different; if it's not then I doubt that half an hour is enough for them to adapt their physiology to a large change.
 
Well I transferred transferred them to their new tank a while ago and they are now doing fine. They are swimming around as a school and they don't appear to be in a lot of stress.

They are probably somewhat stressed because of the whole getting bagged then being jostled around during the car ride despite being put in a cooler surrounded by newspaper and then being acclimated and put into a strange (to them) tank.
 
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