im this close to throwing away this hobby.

I thought it was instant as well. I dose directly in my tank using a python and have never had an negative affects. maybe it depends on the conditioner and/or how bad your water is to begin with? I dunno. keep us posted!
 
how long does conditioner usually take to work in water?
i believe the instructions on the bottle say to let it stir itself for 15 minutes... i would go with that at least.
 
i agree with that article except for a couple points. 1 you will want to aerate extra for your fish. 2 malachite and formalin in my experience will kill your bacteria... not sure about their product though. 3 i would use quickure at half dose because it worked for me 3 times when nothing else would.
 
I too dose directly into the water as I dont know how to keep 35 gals of water on standby for 15 mins lol. I have never had any problems either, however, I didn't know if we were dealing with a special situation with stressed or weak fish from disease or toxins it may be the straw that broke the camel's back type of thing.
 
I thought it was instant as well. I dose directly in my tank using a python and have never had an negative affects. maybe it depends on the conditioner and/or how bad your water is to begin with? I dunno. keep us posted!
I have very high ammonia in my water (city water), so I have to let it set for at least 15 minutes, sometimes longer. I always test my new water for ammonia before adding it to the tank. Once it took 35 minutes! So I guess it depends on where you live, whether or not you need to let the water conditioner set in the water before just adding it to the tank. I could never use something like a python.
 
After all this I sure hope this turns out to be a problem just a little Prime can fix! I use prime exclusively as well, and I usually dose a whole tanks worth into the tank itself and then go fill my 5 gal bucket to refill, that way it has a few mins to start working its magic.
 
When fish are shipped large amounts of ammonia accumulate in the shipping bag. This doesn't pose a threat to the fish because in the closed environment CO2 has also accumulated reducing the pH of the water and keeping the ammonia in its less toxic form. Once the shipping bag is opened to the atmosphere the CO2 escapes, pH rises and the ammonia becomes toxic killing the fish. This is why most wholesalers, retailers and shippers use the plop and drop method.

Exactly. What's worse is that the drip acclimation method may then raise the pH further as non pH depressed water is dripped in from the main tank, exacerbating the situation.

On the other hand, the sudden pH change from bag to tank does little or no harm.

Big differences in GH and KH can be more of an issue, but drip acclimation doesn't help there because these can take a lot longer for a fish to adapt to than drip acclimation allows. Best way here is to match the QT tank GH and KH to that of the shipping water (ask before the fish arrive!) and then gradually change the QT water to that of the display tank over the QT period.
 
When fish are shipped large amounts of ammonia accumulate in the shipping bag. This doesn't pose a threat to the fish because in the closed environment CO2 has also accumulated reducing the pH of the water and keeping the ammonia in its less toxic form. Once the shipping bag is opened to the atmosphere the CO2 escapes, pH rises and the ammonia becomes toxic killing the fish. This is why most wholesalers, retailers and shippers use the plop and drop method.
But if I were to plop and drop a shipped fish which was coming from a bag of lower ph water, I am pretty sure it would die with my ph being at least 8.4 and my kh being 300ppm.
You have a good point in that there isn't time to do a slow drip acclimation, but you should still do something more than plop and drop. Especially if the fish are dying off within days of getting them when the tank parameters are ok. That is many times a sign of bad acclimation process.
 
did a 25 percent water change last night with prime.

the fish are ok, but not great..a couple regular barbs have greyed orange on their fins, so im guessing thats some sort of sign.

the one green barb still loses control, and his top fin has becomed freyed

i got to make a video with my webcam. excuse the horrible quality, so horrible it might not even be very helpful lol

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v664/saoxcore/?action=view&current=Video1.flv

pay attention when the time starts reading 1:15 to about 40...after 40 seconds you might see little more but not much. the main part is at that given time. he seems to be doing better than two days ago, but that video will show a bit how he just goes completely vertical, in this video its only for a few seconds and he bounces back out of his "stage" or "shock" i like to call it, but before he'd just stop all of a sudden, completely vertical, and then float up into the top and then the current from my filter would push him allllll the way down back to the gravel. another thing he'd do is stand in place and shiver/shake, like he was going into shock. sad to see.
 
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