Re: acclimating new fish

["Sherry Bunch" <sherryb@hpcisp.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: Myongsu Kong <mkong@brownwoodlaw.com>
To: <apisto@majordomo.pobox.com>
Sent: Monday, October 11, 1999 3:40 PM
Subject: Re: acclimating new fish


> In the best of all possible worlds, the water in the bag would be the same
> as the water in the tank, or failing that, you would have enough time,
> patience and the facilities to slowly adjust the water in the bag (a large
> 10 gallon bag, let's say - with filter and heater) to equal the water
> values in your target tank.   :)  In the real world, I've used the two
> following methods to acclimate fish:
>
> 1) where the water values in the tank are similar to the water values in
> the bag, then I acclimate in the typical fashion, i.e., equalize water
> temperatures in bag and tank, add tank water slowly to the bag (1/4 of the
> volume of the bag every 15 minutes or so), net fish from bag and place
fish
> in tank.
>
> 2) where the water values are very dissimilar, I do something similar to
> Michael (with or without Amquel - which is used primarily to offset the
> higher pH/ammonia effect - depending upon pH of tank water), which is to
> net and dump without intermediary acclimation.
>
> The theory is that while the first method is preferable, when acclimating
> fish to very different water values, a one time acclimation is less
> stressful than rapid acclimation to multiple intermediate water values.
In
> other words (remember, pH is logarithmic) a jump from 5.5 to 7.5 is
> stressful, but not as stressful as acclimating from 5.5 to 6.5 and then
> shortly thereafter from 6.5 to 7.5 (watch the ammonia!).
>
> Of course, too big of a jump and you kill the fish... yep... it's not
> always easy....
>
> -mk
>

I learn something new everyday. I've always wondered how the LFS manage to
get by with basically dumping the fish in the tank without going through the
acclimation routine such as in your #1. I had never really heard the
explanation that you had given in your second way to acclimate a fish. I
really feel stupid now. I've raised different types of fish for probably 15
years and had never gotten around to questioning the LFS on this. This would
have probably come in handy quite a few times. I've even gone as far as
setting up a second tank to get the same water parameters as the LFS and
then bring it up to optimum over a period of days.

One question, what do you consider to be too big of a jump in pH values to
get by with this?



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