Different ways to acclimate your fish

[sean A.]

Can you guys explain to me the different ways to acclimate your
Fish.

[DamnPepShrimp]

I think acclimating them in a bucket for 2 hours is insane. All my fish I put in a 5g bucket and either get some small tubing and create spyhon and acclimate them that way or by taking cups of water and adding it to the bucket every 5 mins or so. I've never acclimated a fish longer then 30 mins and never lost a fish this way either. If people drip acclimate for 2 hours, you'd think the fish would be starving for oxygen by then, unless they put an air pump in the bucket, I think its more stress that way.

[JHemdal]

+1 on that - too many people think that "longer is better" for acclimation. If you really want to drip acclimate them, you need to monitor the water for all parameters, otherwise you may stress the fish out more by taking longer than is required. There are special cases (long overseas shipments, increases in specific gravity, etc.) where this is needed, but for routine fish transports, 30 minutes is the gold standard.

And - this recent phenom of taking flash pictures of your cool new fish while they are still acclimating just to show others on RC is really poor form...


Jay

[Recty]

Hey, what's wrong with taking pictures? You just think the flash stresses them out too much?

I take pictures of all my fish while acclimating in the buckets for two purposes. One, I want to record the moment. Two, in a dark bucket I cant tell if the fish has ich, is missing a fin, is bleeding from the gills... you get the idea. I take one flash picture of each of my new acquisitions while still in the acclimating bucket so I can show the person who sold it to me that the fish had ich or had a certain problem before I even put it into my tanks.

One of my previous shipments of fish looked OK, but when I took a picture I noticed the achilles tang had ich all over him, so I didnt put him into the tank with a more delicate goldflake angel like I had planned.

Now if you take millions of pictures and flash the heck out of the fish I could see it being a problem, but I have yet to see a fish even object slightly to a flash going off, they dont seem to care a bit.

[sean A.]

Ok now how do you drip acclimate a fish?

[sedor]

Drip acclimating is just using an air tube that you tie in a knot at the end so only one or two drops comes out per second.

I used to be a believer in spending hours and hours acclimating, but i've learned better now. The last few batches of fish I got I just float the bagsuntil I figure they are the same temp, and add a shot or two of water every 5 - 10 minutes. I usually aim for doubling the water level in the bag.

[sean A.]

Ok. Thanks for all of the info you guys

[saltyguy51]

I have done both ways drip and cup ways, some in a half hour some for 2 hours and when i had 2 Anglers shipped from hawaii they looked like they were gasping so I just dumped them in the QT as i didnt think they would survive the acc. and in all cases the fish were fine. Who came up with the 2-3 hour acc. process anyway?

[psilentchild]

i usually do mine for an hour.I let the bag sit in the tank for about 10 to 15 minutes.Then I pour the water in a bucket and some water 5 times every 5 min.Once I have done that 5 times I dump about half the water out the bucket and do another 5 times every 5 min.Then i scoop the fish out with my hand.When i first got into it I was told to just let the bag soak for 15 min and dump the bag over into the tank.What a mistake lucky for me didnt anything happen .Its was my 2 maroon clowns and they are doing fine.What a shock that must have been to them

[JHemdal]

Recty,

I agree that photographing fishes has its uses - but it gets way out of hand sometimes, 'ala that guy who posted those pictures holding his fish in hand.

So I'm just saying I find it highly ironic that people will set up some elaborate drip acclimation system that takes HOURS with the intent of reducing stress, and then fire off 5 or 10 flashes to get a picture of the same fish just to post on RC (grin).

I'm working on an article on acclimation this morning and one thing I point out is that chronic and acute stressors in fish are difficult to measure because capturing the fish to get blood samples influences the results - so all we have to go on is conjecture, and to remove the identified stressors when we can (like using flash cameras).

A couple of days ago I had a challenge - to try and count a batch of ten day old percula clown larvae. One, two, three, oh darn...lost count! So I took a picture top down of the tub, took the image into Photoshop, boosted the contrast and then counted the "dots". Pretty slick - 133 baby clowns. However, they definately didn't enjoy even that single flash. If you have marginal nutrition for them, they can die from that (past experience).

Jay

[Recty]

Yeah, I dont pick up my fish and take pictures but I see it done all the time. I do find it kind of ironic but to each his own.

I really havent noticed any of my fish freaking at all, in bucket or in tank, when I use my flash. I think the fish in my tank probably associate it with food because a lot of times I'll drop in food so they come right up to the glass then I'll take pictures.

The guys in the buckets that I take pictures of dont seem to mind either, but it could just be they are freaked enough already that a little flash of light isnt any big deal :)

[Everyones Hero]

If you want to see if a fish is healthy when it gets shipped to you you should get one of the clear specimen containers. They're fairly cheap & it gives me access to look the fish over.

How long would you drip-line if the fish came out of a system with a SG of 1.018 & it's going into a tank of 1.025?

[JHemdal]

Recty,

I dunno, a section of the acclimation method I'm writing up starts with, "In as dim of light as feasible...." and I just can't can't bring myself to add the tagline, "excepting if you want to take flash photographs of your new fish..."

Obviously, the flash produces stress - I've seen it myself, and like I said, I've killed sub-par fish larva with a flash, or even turning on the room light too fast. For large fish, in good shape, the flash only produces sub-clinical effects. However, nobody can say if these effects are additive or not, so it seems prudent just to avoid using a flash.

Here is a section from an article I wrote on eye health in fish (due out in CORAL magazine, but I haven't been given a date yet):

Fish lack eyelids (although sharks and some other fish have a nictitating membrane that they can close over their eyes to avoid mechanical damage). Fish also seem to lack a rapidly responding iris to quickly limit the amount of light entering the pupil. For these two reasons, fish are unable to adapt to rapid changes in light levels, and some species may react to such a change by going into systemic shock if the light level changes too quickly. Since this shock reaction cannot easily be predicted by aquarists, it is always best to slowly ramp up the lighting in an aquarium so the fish are not startled by a sudden change in intensity. Additionally, since they do not have eyelids, diurnal fish (those active during the day) should be given a mostly dark aquarium at night so that they can receive a proper amount of “down time” that functions as their sleep mechanism. Although fish can survive under “24/7” lighting for long periods, (personal observation) it is prudent to avoid such constant lighting in order to reduce overall stress levels in the fish.


Jay

[JHemdal]

Everyones Hero,

I would be extremely careful acclimating a fish with that much of a rise in specific gravity. While fish tolerate a fast drop in S.G. very well (I've moved fish to half salinity water in less than an hour) going in the reverse direction must be done very slowly - so slowly in fact that I wouldn't try acclimating them to it, but rather, acclimate the fish to a tank with the same S.G. (1.018) and then bring the S.G. of that tank up to 1.025 over SEVEN days (although most fish can tolerate a move like that in three days - if a fish has any damage to its kidneys or skin, going slower is much better).

Jay

[Everyones Hero]

Wow. I drip-lined my lion for 2 hours yesterday hoping that would be enough.

She seems to be doing fine so far.

[JHemdal]

Hero,

You'll probably not see this in a wider bodied fish like your lion, but if you did that to a small thinner fish like a tang or butterfly, you would definately see it looking all emaciated today - the dehydration is so great that the fish literally sucks up like a prune - thin along the back, hollow looking eyes, etc. They usually recover in a day or two. It can kill them, but usually only if the fish has osmotic issues like I mentioned.


Jay

[Everyones Hero]

Wow, I didn't know that. It makes perfect sense, though.

[rguyler]

My favorite LFS has water chemistry very similar to mine so after a few minutes of floating to acclimate the temp, I just let them loose in the tank. However I only do that from this one particular LFS.

When I worked in the wholesale business and received numerous trans-shipments per week, many of the shipments from places such the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, etc would routinely come in very late or roughed up. In those cases the water chemistry in the bags would be off the charts so we would dim the lights and do a slow drip acclimation for several hours to bring them up to temp and chemistry. Inverts would take twice as much time, especially shrimp.

As a side note, shipments that arrived cold actually had low mortality rates. We regularly found that delayed shipments in the cold months would still arrive in decent shape although they would take extra long to bring the temp up. The cold reduced the fish's metabolism so oxygen wasn't depleted so quickly, pH wasn't so low, etc. I don't generally worry so much about the cold as I do the heat.

[lads13]

i agree with JHemdal i love taking pics of my fish but when you are acclimating a fish you should be more concerned about making it stress free not taking pics. and compered to most the people on here i am a novice, but i use the float till temp then the cup method works for me.

[rguyler]

For most trips from the LFS that method should be all you need.

[JHemdal]

Just an update on this, as I worked on my acclimation article, I was confronted with that age-old problem of multiple water additions (either during acclimation, or doing water changes) where subsequent water additions are changing some new water that was just added, reducing the effectiveness of the water additions. It became very apparent that the typical "add 1/4 cup of water every five minutes for 30 minutes" is flawed - the first addition makes a relatively large change in water chemistry, but the last one hardly changes the water chemistry in the acclimation container at all.
It turns out that in order to maintain a gradual, but constant rate of equilibration, you need to do something like this:

Step 1) add 10% new water to the bag, wait five minutes.
Step 2) add 20% new water to the bag, wait five minutes.
Step 3) Add 40% " " "
Step 4) Add 60% " " "
Step 5) Add 80% " " "
Step 6) Add 100% " " "
Step 7) Add 120% " " "
(removing excess water from the container as needed)

This process will bring the water chemistry in the fish transport bag to within 5% of the values of quarantine system within 35 minutes.

It also shows why drip acclimation can't work, unless the rate of flow is increased in a similar fashion during the process.

Jay

[sean A.]

Thanks Jhemdal for all of the info and reserch for your paper. This helps us beginners to this hobby out a lot.

[Beaun]

Depending on where I get my fish from I will either float the bag, then add some water to the bag, wait a few minutes, and add some more, wait a few minutes and add the fish. Or I will float the bad, then add it to a bucket, start a slow drip, and when the water has doubled, I increase the flow, double again, and do an open syphon with the airline tube.

It also depends on the fish. Smaller/delicate fish I will do the longer bucket acclimation, hardier fish I will float the bag and fill it.

[Everyones Hero]

One thing that people don't consider with the whole "1/4 cup" thing is that the amount of change is dependent on the amount of water the fish came in.

A 1/4 cup addition to a bag with only 12 ounces of water is twice the change that would happen if the fish were in 24 ounces of water.

[JHemdal]

Everyone's hero:

Right, and it doesn't even work if you say "25%" instead of a 1/4 cup, or if you use any set volume through the process. As I showed, you have to increase the additions amount quite a bit to overcome the fact that for each addition, you are removing some water that you added the time before. This is a big deal for people who drip-acclimate. If they don't correct for this, and use a constant inflow rate, the rate of equilibration drops off towards the end of the process, basically stalling things out.

Jay

[CBehr]

I've read several threads that suggest float and dump for any fish shipped overnight. The drastic change in temp/pH causes the water to become super toxic in a short period of time. Any thoughts on this?

[shaithis13]

there is some truth in that. maybe all truth i dunno, im not terribly strong on what happens to the chemistry in the bag but i know as the temp goes up the ammonia becomes more toxic. i read a guy on another forum that treats the bag with a ammonia detoxifier for that reason.

[mcbaes72]

There are several different methods for fish acclimation such as Drip Line, Measuring Cup or Turkey Baster. My version is similar to these:

• Remove half the saltwater from the bag by pouring it out slowly.
• Roll edges of plastic bag several times, this will enable bag to float at the surface.
• Float bag inside tank for 10 minutes to raise temperature in bag.
• Add about ½ cup of tank water into bag and wait 10 more minutes.
• Repeat this last step about five or six times which will make the process last about 50 minutes to one hour total.
• Finally, lower the bag slowly into tank and the fish will swim out on its own. I don’t recommend using a net as it could stress out the fish or get their fins entangled.

It's worked out pretty good for me over the years. Of course, I only run a FO tank. I'm sure there would have to be some modification to my version for delicate corals, etc.

[mcbaes72]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15549251#post15549251 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by JHemdal
Just an update on this, as I worked on my acclimation article, I was confronted with that age-old problem of multiple water additions (either during acclimation, or doing water changes) where subsequent water additions are changing some new water that was just added, reducing the effectiveness of the water additions. It became very apparent that the typical "add 1/4 cup of water every five minutes for 30 minutes" is flawed - the first addition makes a relatively large change in water chemistry, but the last one hardly changes the water chemistry in the acclimation container at all.
It turns out that in order to maintain a gradual, but constant rate of equilibration, you need to do something like this:

Step 1) add 10% new water to the bag, wait five minutes.
Step 2) add 20% new water to the bag, wait five minutes.
Step 3) Add 40% " " "
Step 4) Add 60% " " "
Step 5) Add 80% " " "
Step 6) Add 100% " " "
Step 7) Add 120% " " "
(removing excess water from the container as needed)

This process will bring the water chemistry in the fish transport bag to within 5% of the values of quarantine system within 35 minutes.

It also shows why drip acclimation can't work, unless the rate of flow is increased in a similar fashion during the process.

Jay

After comparing your steps to mine, yours makes more sense. Even though I've had good success w/ mine, I think I'll follow your acclimation steps from now on.

[sedor]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15557159#post15557159 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mcbaes72
There are several different methods for fish acclimation such as Drip Line, Measuring Cup or Turkey Baster. My version is similar to these:

• Remove half the saltwater from the bag by pouring it out slowly.
• Roll edges of plastic bag several times, this will enable bag to float at the surface.
• Float bag inside tank for 10 minutes to raise temperature in bag.
• Add about ½ cup of tank water into bag and wait 10 more minutes.
• Repeat this last step about five or six times which will make the process last about 50 minutes to one hour total.
• Finally, lower the bag slowly into tank and the fish will swim out on its own. I don’t recommend using a net as it could stress out the fish or get their fins entangled.

It's worked out pretty good for me over the years. Of course, I only run a FO tank. I'm sure there would have to be some modification to my version for delicate corals, etc.

Only thing I don't like about that is your adding your LFS's water to your tank. You never know whats swimming around in there. I like the above method. I think I might start doing it that way as well.

[mcbaes72]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15557457#post15557457 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ryandlf
Only thing I don't like about that is your adding your LFS's water to your tank. You never know whats swimming around in there. I like the above method. I think I might start doing it that way as well.

That's a good point and one I've thought about. Since I trust my LFS and they run copper in FO tanks, I felt it was pretty safe. But if you're unsure, then have as much bag water removed as possible or just remove the fish from the bag by net.

Yeah, the above method makes a lot of sense. Every step, the water added must increase and they're only 5 min. intervals. If there's some RC FAQ, his acclimation steps should be added to it.

[JHemdal]

Folks,

I did some work on the drip acclimation section of my article, and came up with the following text. Any math geeks care to take a look at the numbers to make sure I didn't drop a decimal or something? I'm NOT presenting this as my main choice for acclimation (I posted that a few days back) I'm putting this in to just give people alternatives:

Drip Acclimation
Setting up a line siphoning water from the main tank to an acclimation vessel is a common practice at many aquarium wholesale companies. These “acclimation tables” can assimilate huge numbers of fish into quarantine systems, dealing with high ammonia levels and other issues in assembly line fashion. Some home aquarists have attempted to emulate this in their home, but there are issues that must be addressed.

First of all, the name “drip acclimation” is a misnomer. It should be termed “flow acclimation”, as the rate must be faster than a drip. If one were to set up a drip line at one drop of water per second (as many home aquarists have assumed would be an appropriate rate) it would take FIFTY hours to equilibrate the difference in water parameters between one liter of shipping water and the receiving tank to within 90% of each other (at one drop a second, you would have an inflow of 180ml per hour, or one liter every 5.5 hours, taking 50 hours to add 90% new water to the acclimation container)!

Obviously, the flow rate must be faster than that. One milliliter per second would result in one liter of shipping water to reach 90% equilibration in 2 1/2 hours (3600 ml per hour, 2.5 hours to reach 9 liters of water, diluting the shipping water waste to 10% of the original concentration).

Obviously, aquarists should monitor the changing water values in the acclimation container throughout the process, and adjust the rate accordingly. One trick is to place a few drops of methylene blue liquid per gallon of water in the acclimation container. Not only does this have some antibiotic affect, but it can help with oxygen transfer. As new water flows into the acclimation container, the aquarist judges the amount of mixing by the dilution of the blue color over time.

Remember that flow acclimation systems may require adjunct aeration and heating to maintain better water quality in the acclimation container during the longer acclimation time. It also helps to use rectangular acclimation containers as the volume can be measured using a ruler (length in inches * width * depth of water / 231= gallons.


Jay

[Recty]

I know with BlueZoo, they send these little capsules filled with a green liquid that is supposed to neutralize ammonia. They also send a drip line with a suction cup, pretty nice.

I just removed my fish bags from the styrofoam box, squirted the green stuff into the box, tilted it at an angle and put a little bit of the water from the bag into the box (enough the fish could swim easily) and then put the fish into the box and started a "flow acclimation" line going.

Simple, easy, and I really like that BlueZoo includes all of that with every box. I'm actually preferring ordering from them than Live Aquaria, which says A LOT as I really like Live Aquaria.

[Newreeflady]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15549251#post15549251 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by JHemdal
Just an update on this, as I worked on my acclimation article, I was confronted with that age-old problem of multiple water additions (either during acclimation, or doing water changes) where subsequent water additions are changing some new water that was just added, reducing the effectiveness of the water additions. It became very apparent that the typical "add 1/4 cup of water every five minutes for 30 minutes" is flawed - the first addition makes a relatively large change in water chemistry, but the last one hardly changes the water chemistry in the acclimation container at all.
It turns out that in order to maintain a gradual, but constant rate of equilibration, you need to do something like this:

Step 1) add 10% new water to the bag, wait five minutes.
Step 2) add 20% new water to the bag, wait five minutes.
Step 3) Add 40% " " "
Step 4) Add 60% " " "
Step 5) Add 80% " " "
Step 6) Add 100% " " "
Step 7) Add 120% " " "
(removing excess water from the container as needed)

This process will bring the water chemistry in the fish transport bag to within 5% of the values of quarantine system within 35 minutes.

It also shows why drip acclimation can't work, unless the rate of flow is increased in a similar fashion during the process.

Jay

Would you do the same for fish that were shipped O/N?

Would you use this method for coral?

Thanks,
Angela

[JHemdal]

Angela,

The article has a number of "special cases" discussed in it, both for corals as well as long shipments. Basically, for corals that are shipped damp - obviously no point in acclimating them. For corals shipped in water, people have their options, some acclimate like a bag of fish, others don't acclimate at all.

For long shipments, the basic idea is to acclimate for temperature before opening the bag (in order to keep the dissolved gasses from changing) - then test the bag water for salinity and pH and create some fresh seawater with the same parameters, and move the fish immediately over to that and acclimate from that point (gets them out of the high ammonia / high bacteria issue).

Jay

[Newreeflady]

Hi Jay,

I think a better idea, given that freshly prepared saltwater and tank water are both likely quite different from the water in the bag, would be to simply remove water from the aquarium and dilute that with DI to match the salinity of the bag water. After that you could immerse the fish in this salinity-matched aquarium water before acclimating with more tank water to match the salinity over X minutes (30 I think you had mentioned.)

I didn't notice the article link- I will take a look at it tomorrow.

Thanks for the reply,
Angela

[sedor]

+1 Angela, using fresh mixed SW might be a little tricky, even if you had some that had been aerated for a while, it would still take time to adjust salinity, try and match ph, temp etc. Start with what you got and start diluting with your tank water asap. The point of acclimating is to quickly, but slightly adjust the new fish to your water by diluting until the water it is in is the exact same as your tanks.

[Newreeflady]

This has been a helpful discussion. I only worry that those who don't visit this forum might not see it. I did a search on acclimation (when I'm adding something new, I always like to check to see if the species I am adding have special acclimation requirements.) I usually just drip, but it makes total sense that this would not be the best method given:

1) The low oxygen, polluted bag water shouldn't be used for much longer than necessary.

2) The quantity of water you add to the bag will effectively dilute the water more slowly as time passes. We usually address this by continually dumping water from the bag- but still, I like the new method better in theory.

I do think, as I mentioned, that it would be best to dilute the tank water rather than using freshly mixed saltwater as in the latter case you'd end up doing two chemical acclimations (pH, nitrogenous species, etc)- one, where you have immersed the fish in new saltwater, which differs from its bag water; and the second where you acclimate to match the chemistry and salinity of the tank water.

cheers,
-A

[JHemdal]

Angela,

Sorry, no - there wasn't a link to an article, its one that I'm currently writing, I was just explaining that I discussed those issues elsewhere.

Regarding the "fresh mixed seawater" - I wasn't clear, I did not mean freshly mixed from dry salt - that would be a huge issue (many salt brands contain 0.25 ppm ammonia and go through pH swings when first mixed!) No, what I meant was to temperature adjust the fish, then create a portion of tank water that is the same salinity and pH as the bag water, using DI water and an acid (sodium biphosphate mono-basic or maybe HCl). As people mentioned, this is a lot of work. I only use it for shipments in excess of 36 hours or so. I've never left out the pH step, but feel that this shouldn't be done as it is one of the three major recognized parameters that need to be equilibrated.

Jay

[Newreeflady]

Jay-

I was thinking to somehow match the pH. I only have a rough pH test (salifert) but will take a water sample and test both that and conductivity and match them. I have some HCl- not sure how pure it is due to the fact that it's sold as a pool acid. I could always grab a tiny bit from work, though.

Thanks,
Angela

[JHemdal]

The sodium biphosphate mono-basic is safer than HCl, and I think is better in terms of buffering capacity. Still, when I was a kid, I dosed a series of wholesale tanks with it in preparation for an incoming South American shipment (we needed really low pH values). I went home and my mom ran my jeans through the washer - they came out with huge holes in them!
No skin damage, not sure why....

J

[Newreeflady]

What would people without access to a chemical lab use to lower their pH without adversely affecting their animals? Is something like acetic acid OK? I know it's weak, but it could partly be the dilution you need as well. I don't know much about biology, so I'm not sure if this is OK.

Angela

[lostintheocean]

Putting a new fish in the display after acclimated? Where is the quarantine? Very risky without. I float a bag for 15 minutes or so then add small amounts of tank water every few minutes for another 15 or 20 minutes. I usually do a temp/ph adjusted fresh water dip with a little methyl blue for a minute or two or less if the fish looks very unhappy. Then into the quarantine tank for a couple weeks or so.

[Newreeflady]

Hi lost,

You're right, it's risky. I've always taken the risk because I don't want to set up and maintain a quarantine. My system is pretty automated, and I don't have the money to set up another automated system or the desire to keep it up without the automation... I don't add many fish, so I lower my chances of problems statistically with compare to people with larger systems. But, still, it's risky, no doubt.

-A