Acclimating fish

It will be in the bag for about 20ish minutes coming home from the lfs.

 

How are you all dealing with the ammonia in bags shipped overnight?

 

i usually float for 10-15 if it spends 30 minutes or more in a bag and then drip it for another 30 minutes or more depending on how delicate the fish/coral is...if under 30 minutes i usually drip from anywhere between 30 minutes(usually most fish other than online orders) to an hour and a half to 2 and a half(sensitive corals and online orders) depending on how delicate of an invert/fish/coral etc

 

I use that method for everything, and I have never had any problems.

 

That won't be a problem then and any acclimation procedure will do. If mine are shipped over night, I try to bring the bag up in temp while it's still closed by floating, but once I open that overnight bag, the fish is coming out of that water immediately.

Ok, there seems to be a lot of commas in there... LOL. Sorry for the poor grammar of that one.

 

Agreed. I should've pointed out that I've always purchased from a LFS, so my livestock have never been in the bag more than an hour prior to acclimation.

 

Th salinity is super important and often overlooked. Make sure you know the values of the LFS and your own. He should go in similar or lower S.G... not too much higher. That's something you should be ready to change with extra water on stand by. The quick acclimations we are all talking about here are not sufficiently long enough for him to adjust to S.G. They have to go up over days.

 

I think I'll do the method mr. Bill suggested until the salinities are the same.

 

I started testing the bags of fish that were shipped overnight from different sources. I didn't like what I found.









As some of you know, that ammonia is kindda benign when it's in a bag with depleting oxygen and increasing CO2. Once you open that bag, Os will rush in and CO2 will rush out, your pH will shoot up and that ammonia will be toxic. For that reason I don't do a true acclimation. Even if you don't agree with this method, you have to deal with the present ammonia. Don't let them sit in toxic ammonia. Neutralize it... something. Ammonia may not kill your fish, so you think it did nothing. But ammonia exposure scars gill filaments and your fish will not thrive like he should have.

 

Ouch:/ I won't be ordering online at all so I should be ok. Plus shipping is ridicules...