Low to high salinity acclimation?

[cheucklate]

Greetings, I am just curious as to how you guys are acclimating fish from low salinity to high salinity.

I ask because currently I do not have the room for a quarrantine tank and have been doing 1-3 hour long drip acclimates from 1.017 (LFS) to 1.026 (measured by refractometer). The problem is however from my experience, the fish have about a 40% mortality rate dying within the first week. All water parameters are within range.

Any reefers out there without QT have good success acclimating? I am tired of losing $$$ :( thanks in advance.

Btw tank does not have aggressive mates. Aside from a pistol shrimp.

[Cancun]

Hi there....I have also had the exact same problem in the past. Now I ONLY do one of the two things....I only buy my fish from LFS that have that fish matching my salinity (1.025) for a good 2 weeks....or I buy my fish from other local stores that keep all of their tanks at 1.025 or so. I stopped buying fish from tanks with low salinity a long time ago. I had the same prob...I would drip for 3 hrs and within 4 days to a week the fish died. It would even eat and swim just fine...but then die a few days to a week later.

From my personal experience I would find a LFS that keeps their tanks at 1.025 or so.....or find one that acclimates the fish shipment slowly over a week to 10 days to 1.025 salinity. From what I understand when acclimating from low to high salinity it needs to be done a 1/2 a point to 1 point per 24 hour period. So unless you get the QT and set it up to match the lower salinity...and raise it slowly over a period of a week...I would ONLY buy fish that come from tanks that match your salinity. I even bring my own refractometer in to test the salinity if I go to a new store...LOL. Hey it is our money....we can't be to safe can we?!

[mcgyvr]

Personally I find acclimation to be more damaging then just going for it..
All I ever do is float the bag for 15 minutes to stabilize temp then just dump them right it..
Never had a mortality yet..

[mark54321]

I always wonder how fish can take fresh water dip ,going from high salinity to low and back to high, but we worry about acclimating it just few points difference. All I do is temp. acclimation and quick 30 min. fast drip and that's it. Never lost a fish yet due to acclimation process.

[cougareyes]

Going lower is never an issue. There were a couple of stores here that kept their tanks at 1.018 or so, now one of them wised up and is now keeping at reef conditions. They learned that so many fish were dying. The only way is a slow acclimation, I've had it work with a 2 hr acclimation. But you do have to bring them up slowly, if you can't qt and you don't have another choice for purchase, that's it.

[formsix]

The LFS is keeping their tanks at a low salinity to run copper to keep disease from spreading (or being apparent, depending on how skeptical you are)! At a minimum I would suggest setting up a temporary QT (either a 10g tank with a cheap powerhead and heater, or even a 5g bucket) that matches the salinity of the new fish. Then you can temp acclimate, put the fish in the QT (w/o any bag water) and slowly bring up the salinity. If you want to do it over the course of a few days you can add Prime to the water and have no worries w/ ammonia.

I can't keep a cycled QT going full time either, but a 10g temporary tank is so easy and cheap to run that it's silly not too. It also takes care of the two biggest problems that I have with slow drip acclimating -- first that the fish is still in their old water (w/ copper, ammonia, and who knows what else), and second that the temperature drops so quickly in that little bit of water that after just 20 min it's noticeably colder than the DT (at least in my house, which is never kept at 80 degrees!).

[Ron Reefman]

Some here may say I'm crazy, but I have been in the hobby for 12+ years and I quit doing quarantine some years ago. After keeping a QT for several years and never seeing any fish (or any other invert) with an issue, I quit. Now I just do a 15 to 30 minute temperature acclimation and I may add some tank water to the bag the fish is in during that time. Then I pour the bag and fish into a small bowl, dump as much water as I can (99%) out of the bowl and then add the fish to my tank. I have had a few fish not survive long, but the vast majority (95%) have been fine and I've never introduced any disease or parasite into my tanks. And I do add quite a few inverts that are legally collected in the wild (with the proper license). They don't go directly into the 180g DT, they go in a 65g shallow reef most of the time. That includes snails, crabs, stars, cucumbers, corals, sponges, clams, spaghetti worms, feather dusters, anemones, macro algae, oysters, shrimp and more!