Best Method for Acclimatizing Fish

T

tankenvy

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Apr 4, 2007
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After years of using the "floating bag" technique, where you place new fish/bag in tank and add a few ounces of tank water to the bag over 45 minutes before taking fish out with net and adding fish to aquarium (WITHOUT BAG WATER), I thought I'd try the dripline method.

So I bought a dripline at my LFS that came with a cheapo plastic valve at the end of the line, so you can drip water into a bucket with the new fish. (Supposed to set it at 5 drips per second, wait until volume of water in bucket doubled; then siphon off half of the water, repeat drip, then take fish out with net and place in tank.)

Problem is, the valve on the dripline is crapola :irked:; I can't get a good, consistent flow out of it. So as an alternative method, which I read on a few sites, I simply dumped 4 ounces of my tank water into the bucket every 8 minutes, using a measuring cup, and when the volume of the water from the travel bags was doubled, I siphoned off half the bucket and repeated the process.

Whole thing took about 45 minutes.

Any views on whether I should bother finding a better valve and return to the dripline method? Seems to me the cup method is easier.

My new fish don't seem to be the worse for wear (keyhole cichlids), going on three days now.


Thanks! :thm:
 
Acclimating fish seems to be an area that will forever serve to be debatable. I personally do the float and add method for up to 3 hours depending on the animal for both FW & SW), but I see valid cases for other approaches as well. One thing I do try to keep in mind is the conditions of the water they are transported in, how long they've been in it, etc. I know several very succesful keepers that match temps and pour through a net and release with basically no acclimation. I think it comes own to personal choice, being observant, and thinking about the chemistry at least a little.
 
Here in UK there is a device called "Fintro" made by Maidenhead Aquatics and is brilliant. You dump the fish in it and it slowly adds water to the fish and the whole thing taes about half an hour to an hour. I dunno if you are in the UK or not so...
 
I love the drip method. But I used to be a guy that just let the bag sit for a while then dump em in with great success.
 
Fish-Addict said:
Here in UK there is a device called "Fintro" made by Maidenhead Aquatics and is brilliant. You dump the fish in it and it slowly adds water to the fish and the whole thing taes about half an hour to an hour. I dunno if you are in the UK or not so...
Click to expand...

There is something similar here called Aclimate by Reef Gently. They showed it at MACNA, but I have no personal experience with them.
 
I do the drip acclimation. I grab a bucket or something smaller and pour the fish in, then I get an airline tubing make a siphon and let it pour into the bucket. Then, I tie a knot to slow the acclimation down. Depending on the bicket size, it takes about an hour or so. It's prove to be the best way to acclimate fish. If you don't wanna tie it, you can get one of those things for airline where it can slow down the air, you can use that at the end.

That's the way I do things.
 
I never have tried it before but I remember in school where we had one bucket placed higher then another with cotton twine running from one to the other. Natural capillary action drew the water from one to the other. That might work.
 
it really depends.
for reef fish I use drip acclimation (other sensitive fish too)

but the reef fish are moving from lower Sg to higher Sg. many places ship fish in low sg as it is less stressful.

but there is argument also regarding ammonia..open a bag of fish shipped and you may have to deal with rising ammonia.. in these cases you are better off doing temp acclimation and plop them in the new tank(sans the water of course)

always in qt tho.
 
If the water the fish were in is close to my own (using gh, kh and tds for comparison) I get them close to the same temperature, pour into a net and put them in the quarantine tank. If the water they were in is quite a bit different, I will adjust the water in the quarantine tank before adding them. I do this by either diluting my tap water with RO water or by mixing in some rift lake buffer mix, depending on whether the water from the LFS was harder or softer. I can then adjust their water parameters over a matter of weeks not minutes.
 
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