Any experience with lowest drip acclimation setting?

[CWO4GUNNER]

Im acclimating a sensitive fish using a bucket, heater, original water fish came in and an airline from the aquarium using a valve to drip water into the bucket at a drip rate of about 1 drop per second, the slowest I have ever set one.

Anyone experienced or in the know as to whether that is a slow enough setting or should I drip from another bucket and cut the tank water with RO slower? Just want to know if someone has the quick answer befor I have to do some reading on very slow acclimation.

UPDATE: Well that wasn't too much reading. From what I have read for both marine and freshwater 3 drops per second or 180 drops per minute is considered the slowest, so I will try and keep it at 1 drop or 60 drops per minute which means that in 24 hours 1.5 gallons would have entered the container. That should be slow enough. Perhaps Ill make it 2 per second and 1.5 gallons in 12 hours.

 

[Slappy*McFish]

Usually, I do 2-3 drops/sec for 1-2 hrs. With sea stars and sensitive marine inverts, I've gone as slow as 1 drop/sec over 3-4 hrs.

 

[Chrisinator]

Im just thinking, at first you might 2-3 drops per seconds so that more water can be put in there so the fish has room to swim. Then you can slow it down to 1 drop per second.

 

[CWO4GUNNER]

Very good point but I diden't want to take a chance on early shock so instead I tilted the container to give the fish more original water (a new guy at the LFS told me that 1 quart was more then enough and couldn't spare any more), then I mixed a special batch of RO and tap water to the exact PH, GH and TDS and dripped that inside at 4 drops per second until there was enough water. After that I switched out buckets with water from the aquarium and slowed drip to 2 drips per second.

So far so good just got to check on the heat and drip rate once in a while.

 

[jmhart]

I typically do 2-3 drops per second, but about every hour or two I take a glass full of water out of the bucket.

The idea there is that, as the bucket fills up, the effect of each new drop lessens, so once I take out a glass full of water, the drops continue the process.

 

[dixienut]

i did a 1 drop per 2 seconds when acclimating my mollies to full marine and it took over a day and a half,.. worked out fine,.. had them in it thru the day, until doubled water then dumped excess water to the line again and left them over night and by morning they were doubled water volume again and went in the tanks and have been fine since,..

 

[CWO4GUNNER]

Yeah! What a difference I did 3 DPM overnight or a total of 20 hours since yesterday emptying the 5 gallon container of 60% of its water each time it got full and checked this morning to make sure that PH, TDS and temperature were exactly the same as the tank this time. Normally this same specie is dead by now when I only would drip acclimate them for an hour at 6 DPM.

But he is swimming around and forging for food alert and checking out his new home. I believe now that it wasn't the meds that killed my puffers, it was just the water chemistry difference between my water the most LFS, and the fact that I did not acclimate them slowly enough. Most of the LFS water down here is extremely hard 600-800 Cal/Mag, where my water is only 160 Cal/Mag.

If all goes well as it has so far, I know now how to insure good acclimation of sensitive fish.

 

[jmhart]

What species?

 

[CWO4GUNNER]

Il tell you if he lives a few more days, I want to make sure that the edge of the woods are far off before making and solid claims. But it is a species I have never been able to keep more then a day after I changed my water chemistry eliminating the heavy use of RO which I know now is not necessary other them a little for dehydration maintenance (50/50) between normal water changes..

 

[Slappy*McFish]

Awesome! I was wondering what it was, as well.