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Drip acclimation is a useful tool when receiving shipped critters. I also use it when buying local fish, although I do it a little differently.
Drip acclimation helps new fish with the transition to your water when you buy them. Think about it: you buy fish from somebody with totally different water, they ship them to you, you float them for awhile and then BAM, new water. No wonder many people find their fish hiding for the first couple of days. Sadly, this can also lead to deaths in otherwise healthy fish.
To drip acclimate your new fish, you will need a CLEAN bucket and some airline tubing. When you receive your fish, float them in their quarantine tank for about 15-25 minutes to allow the temperature to come up in their bags. Then open the bags and gently pour the fish into the bucket. Take the airline tubing and get suction in it as if you were going to do a water change in the quarantine tank. Now tie a knot in your airline tubing so that the flow is restricted to about 1 drip per second. When you have your flow where you want it, position the airline so that it is dripping from your quarantine tank into the bucket. Here's the hard part: Leave it alone! Leave the fish alone, leave the bucket alone. The fish have been highly stressed. They have most likely been jostled and banged around by those wonderful shipping companies. They have been in complete darkness. The best thing you can do for them is leave them alone. When the bucket is full (hours later) net the fish out and put them in the quarantine tank. You do not want to introduce anybody else's water into your system.
I said I drip acclimate local purchases a little differently. Here in College Station, the water is the same all over, because the town is so small, so I know that the water they're in at the fish stores is the same as the water I have at home (only mine's cleaner!
). With them, I do not knot the airline tubing so tightly. I make it so that there is not a constant flow of water, but a series of very fast drops. This takes less time, but still allows the fish to acclimate to my set-up, my temperature, and any small differences that there may be in the different areas of town.
Ellen
Drip acclimation helps new fish with the transition to your water when you buy them. Think about it: you buy fish from somebody with totally different water, they ship them to you, you float them for awhile and then BAM, new water. No wonder many people find their fish hiding for the first couple of days. Sadly, this can also lead to deaths in otherwise healthy fish.
To drip acclimate your new fish, you will need a CLEAN bucket and some airline tubing. When you receive your fish, float them in their quarantine tank for about 15-25 minutes to allow the temperature to come up in their bags. Then open the bags and gently pour the fish into the bucket. Take the airline tubing and get suction in it as if you were going to do a water change in the quarantine tank. Now tie a knot in your airline tubing so that the flow is restricted to about 1 drip per second. When you have your flow where you want it, position the airline so that it is dripping from your quarantine tank into the bucket. Here's the hard part: Leave it alone! Leave the fish alone, leave the bucket alone. The fish have been highly stressed. They have most likely been jostled and banged around by those wonderful shipping companies. They have been in complete darkness. The best thing you can do for them is leave them alone. When the bucket is full (hours later) net the fish out and put them in the quarantine tank. You do not want to introduce anybody else's water into your system.
I said I drip acclimate local purchases a little differently. Here in College Station, the water is the same all over, because the town is so small, so I know that the water they're in at the fish stores is the same as the water I have at home (only mine's cleaner!
). With them, I do not knot the airline tubing so tightly. I make it so that there is not a constant flow of water, but a series of very fast drops. This takes less time, but still allows the fish to acclimate to my set-up, my temperature, and any small differences that there may be in the different areas of town.Ellen
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