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Receiving Shipped Fish - Drip Acclimation

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  • Receiving Shipped Fish - Drip Acclimation

    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

  • #2
    Re: Receiving Shipped Fish - Drip Acclimation

    I have also read arguing processes about acclimation.

    When being shipped ammonia builds up in the bag water but ph drops some making the ammonia less lethal to the fish and when you acclimate it raises the ph making the ammonia lethal again.


    I don't know how much truth this holds and have never had much problem doing it with drip acclimation or with just floating to get temps right and then scooping the fish out and releasing them into the tank.

    I do make it a habit to ask the seller/shipper/dealer what their water parameters are so I can see what needs to be done if anything at all.
    700g Mini-Monster tank

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    • #3
      Re: Receiving Shipped Fish - Drip Acclimation

      If the shipper fasts the fish before shipping, there shouldn't be that much ammonia in the bag.

      The only thing I have ever heard about that is that if you open the bag right away, then the pH can change rapidly in the bag because the CO2 build-up is released and oxygen enters. This is why you float the bag first.

      Also, what would you do to your water? Messing with your own water parameters can be tricky. I'm sure you can handle it, and I bet I could if I wanted to, but I think any newbies reading this should not take that advice and run with it. Messing with your water only opens up a whole realm of possibilites for things to fail.

      Ellen

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      • #4
        Re: Receiving Shipped Fish - Drip Acclimation

        I think it was something to that extent too about the co2 but I remember reading something about ammonia. I think it was that the ph drops in the bag which makes ammonia less-toxic and when adding water from your tank it raises it back up causing the ammonia to come out of it's toxic state causing gill burns and such.

        with the water parameters, I ask the what the fish were in just so I can get an idea of what acclimation is needed or if any. Also lets me know how much of a shock the fish are going to be in when they get put into the tank.

        My tang cichlid tanks gets buffers every water change and they have water buffering substrate which changes the water params slightly from what it is at the tap. Also my planted tank gets a good dosing of co2 and has peat in the substrate so I would imagine that the ph and hardness in that tank is pretty low. Both setups I could have added nothing in the terms of buffering additives and they are different from that coming out of the tap and I'm sure breeders dont use much of the stuff we do in our tanks so the water params would have much more variance to it. Not trying to steer a newb the wrong way but just pointing out that there are things in our tanks that change the water from how it comes out the tap and could be totally different from what the water was like were the fish originated from.
        700g Mini-Monster tank

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        • #5
          Re: Receiving Shipped Fish - Drip Acclimation

          I highly recommend the drip method or a variation of it when receiving healthy fish that have been shipped properly by folks who know what they are doing. If fasted for 24 hours before shipping  has been done the ammonia level should not be a problem and drip acclimation will save you a lot of grief, if done properly it can even help when there is some difference in ph and hardness in your water and the water the fish came out of.
          I am one who does not order a lot of fish shipped in,( maybe two or three times a year) but when I do, the fish are special to me because I am ordering for my breeding stock, to get specific genotypes that I want and am often paying a lot of money for the fish, it is rare for me to recieve fish in that I have less than 5 or 6 hundred dollars tied up in. In my case I set up an aquarium with water perameters that closely match the shippers water. I still use a form of drip acclimation and take as much as 6 to 8 hours  to acclimate the fish. Then over a several week period I will change the water to my perameters that I use.
          I would not feed a newly arrived fish for several hours and then not feed any live or frozen foods for a week to 10 days, giving the fish a chance to have its immune system return to normal before I chance stressing it.
          If a fish comes in and is in bad shape and the bag is fouled badly then all bets are off and I use the drop and plop method and hope meds take care of the problems.
          GIVE NONE, TAKE NONE - BE FREE, HAVE FUN

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          • #6
            Re: Receiving Shipped Fish - Drip Acclimation

            Just wanted to clarify that I am all for the drip method and do so with my expensive fish as well.

            My zebras dripped for the most part of the day when I first got them and I would do so again.
            700g Mini-Monster tank

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            • #7
              Re: Receiving Shipped Fish - Drip Acclimation

              I don't know if this is a dumb question or not but hey, we all have to learn somehow.  Okay, say you do this like Ellen explained.  My QT tank is 10 gallons.  If the bucket is filled with water won't my tank be nearly empty?  Do you just top off the tank (and dechlorinate it, etc).  This is assuming the bucket I'm using is a 5 gallon bucket.
              Thanks!
              58G Malawis
              10G planted

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              • #8
                Re: Receiving Shipped Fish - Drip Acclimation

                When drip acclimating I just use what water that was in the bag unless it was a large bag, then I just use enough water to cover the fish x2 and let it drip really slow till the water in the bucket doubles from the start point.

                Shouldn't be much water removed after that but if it is I would just add de-chlorinated water.
                700g Mini-Monster tank

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                • #9
                  Re: Receiving Shipped Fish - Drip Acclimation

                  I add back in more dechlorinated freshwater.

                  If you're starting with tapwater, and if your tapwater is the same out of the tap as it is after a day or two, a topoff on the qt tank before adding the fish in should be fine.

                  Ellen

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                  • #10
                    Re: Receiving Shipped Fish - Drip Acclimation

                    If chemicals are used to get rid of the nitrigen compounds before or as soon as the bag is opened the drip method is is at least as good as floating the unopened bag for twenty minutes and then tanking the fish only as soon as the bag is opened. I do think there are some guppy strains that are incapable of making the transition from soft to hard water over the long term due to the differences in disease pathogens present in soft and hard water. In some cases a slower transition over a two year period might be sucessful but in other cases an outcross for new genes is necessary. Since a drip does not fix it arguably the other method is not that much worse at least with soft water guppies. If one seriously wants some difficult genes from soft water guppies then maintain the genes in soft water until they can be transitioned to hard water.

                    max

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                    • #11
                      Re: Receiving Shipped Fish - Drip Acclimation

                      That sounds good.  I normally float the bag for 10-30 minutes (depending on what else is going on around here) then I pour 1/2 cup of tank water in there every few minutes for another 15-30 minutes.  Is this okay or should I try the drip method next time?  
                      What about when you transfer them from QT to their tank?  If water parameters are the same and temp is the same can I just put them straight in or will floating in a bag be less stressful.  This is my first QT.
                      58G Malawis
                      10G planted

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                      • #12
                        Re: Receiving Shipped Fish - Drip Acclimation

                        I think with QT you could slowly acclimate the whole qt tank while qt'ing.
                        700g Mini-Monster tank

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                        • #13
                          Re: Receiving Shipped Fish - Drip Acclimation

                          If all your water parameters are the same in the qt and in the main tank, you can just net and plop them with no problem. They're not having to adjust to anything new if it's all the same water.

                          Ellen

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                          • #14
                            Re: Receiving Shipped Fish - Drip Acclimation

                            That's what I thought but after all my effort in quarantining I didn't want to lose a fish due to something I could have easily avoided.
                            58G Malawis
                            10G planted

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