whats the best aclimation procedure?

[scubasteve247]

whats your stand on the best acclimation procedure for fish and inverts?

[Paintbug]

the drip method works for me. i drip everything but snails.

[scubasteve247]

thats what i figured, what about time length?

[Paintbug]

usually about 1 hour. sometimes more sometimes less. im sure others will join in here :D

[frederickk]

I rather like to take my time and go for at least 2 to 3 hours.

[Tava176]

I drip for an hour or so until the SG matches the SG in my tank.

I ussually double the water volume in the bag.

[Johnsteph10]

It depends.

Fish and corals are usually less than an hour (unless the SG is really low...then a lot longer).

Inverts depend...snails/hermits - no acclimation. Shrimp/starfish, etc. - hours and hours.

[Dan Thrash]

when using the drip method...how fast do you drip? i've read that it should be a quick drip. when i do that, it only takes about 15 minutes to double the bag water...but i'll usually keep it going for 2 hrs.

another thing (for fish or corals)...when i fish store keeps their SG low....like 1.019...and you want to acclimate to 1.025....is it ok to raise the SG that much in 2 hrs???

[Paintbug]

i stay around 1-2 drips per second.

[pcragg]

I drip fast (more like a stream). This keeps the temperature constant.

Its always worked for me.

[asfullax]

Everytime I do a slow drip, the tempature goes out of whack.

I do a two stage. the first hour I double (maybe more) the water volume with a fairly slow drip. then I empty half out and perform a faster drip for another 30 mins. or untiled doubled again.

Seems to work fine so far.

[intenseimage]

Knock on wood I have never done any acclimation (be it fish, coral, inverts, etc) besides a 15-30 mins temp acclimation and everything is/has been doing WELL

After the bag has floated for a bit I dump out most of the transport water into a tub and depending on the species either dump them with the remaining water into the tank (fish/inverts) or do a quick out/in swap exposing them to a little air (snails, crabs, some corals)

I guess with a smaller tank its hard to loose all that water doing a drip acclimation since I dont want to add that much transport water back in.

[twon8]

i acclimate fish with an aqualifter and a five gallon bucket, so i do a water change at the same time. usually takes 45 minutes, or whenever i remember i have fish to put into the tank.

most corals get floated, then held out of water for a few minutes and into the tank they go. I haven't lost one since i have been doing it this way. most of my new purchases are zoanthids or sps, so ymmv with lps. i have also put clams right in without acclimating, I have 8, all healthy and looking good.