Acclimating/introducing new fish to a salt tank?

Question

When acclimating a new fish what do you have to do?
i have heard you have to slowerly drip the water from your tank into the fish bag but is this true? if not what do oyu have to do, is it the same as tropical fish with just sitting the bag in the water

Answer 1

That will depend on the sensitivity of the fish. Some of the hardy species you can do like freshwater where you float the bag and do several partial water changes in the bag, dumping the water down the drain, not into the tank. I'd still do smaller volume changes and wait a little longer between changes, though.

If the fish is something sensitive (and/or expensive) a drip acclimation is safer. The easy way to do this is to put the fish and the water it came in in a clean bucket, and use two pieces of airline tubing with a flow valve (like this: http://www.thatpetplace.com/pet/group/10420/product.web )connecting them as a siphon from the main tank - this allows you to adjust the flow rate to a slow drip. You just have to keep an eye on the bucket so 1) the fish doesn't jump out, and 2) it doesn't overflow. Then you can just top off the tank with water you've premixed ahead of time.

Answer 2

Conventional wisdom says to acclimate fish one of the two ways Copperhead described, any book you read on the subject will back that up; but in practice, acclimating is useless.

In a large store or in a service business, there is just not enough time to drip fish into a tank, so it isn't usually done. When you have to drive to 8 accounts in a day and add fish to some of them, you just have to dump them right in and move on to the next one. I've NEVER had a fish expire because it was not acclimated.

In fact, one theory contends that acclimating saltwater fish are actually more harmful to them. When the fish is in the bag, it is creating a lot of ammonia. But, at the same time, the Ph is going down, due to all of the excretions the fish is producing in the bag. When the Ph drops, it makes the ammonia far less toxic to the fish. So, when you open that bag full of ammonia and low Ph and start adding your tank water to it, you are gradually raising the Ph, but the ammonia is still present. As the Ph rises, the ammonia becomes more toxic to the fish. So, the process of acclimating is sometimes subjecting the fish to more stress than if you simply netted him out and added immediately to your tank.

Answer 3

Listen to Copperhead, everything he said is correct and there is no point in typing it again.

Answer 4

ditto to copper