Starfish acclimation

[kparton]

What is the prevailing idea on starfish acclimation now?

I want to get a serpent star, but I know they are very difficult to acclimate adequately. I do drip acclimate, but usually only for about an hour, removing some water from the bag about halfway through. Is this long enough or should I stretch it out more? Also, what about snails, should they be treadted any differently during acclimation? I have acclimated snails before, but I have not had great luck keeping them alive.

As far as tank parameters,

SG - 1.026
pH - 8.0
Nitrates <1
phosphates - 0
nitrites and ammonia - 0

 

[Anonymous]

as slowly as possible, is what i've always been told.
i acclimated my blue linkia
for about 7-8 hours, and he was fine.

 

[Anonymous]

And some folks do even longer than that.

 

[grav]

I once lost a skunk cleaner to a too-quick acclimation. Never again.

I do everything nice and long. Fish, 3-4 hrs at least. Snails, crabs anything... nice and long.

 

[kparton]

Do you drip acclimate? If so, how quickly do you set the drip. I think I'm going to set up for a longer acclimation. I got 8 snails the other daya nd acclimated them for what I thought was a long time, and now 4 have died.

 

[Anonymous]

Drip acclimation is best set up using an airline manifold. You can completely customize your drip, but you also want to be sure you're dripping in the correct salinity. The animals you're speaking of will do best in a rather narrow range -- between 1.024 - 1.026 -- with 1.025 being what you want to shoot for UNLESS they've been being held/kept/propagated in water of a different salinity. (Try contacting the seller for this, or test the water as soon as you get it back.) My preferred rate for animals I'm having trouble with no faster than one drop/second. This means that it can take you two to three hours, even more in some cases. However, especially in the case of sea stars, it pays to be more patient and diligent than it does to go by what "seems" long enough. HTH

 

[kparton]

Based on my hydrometer, my SG is right at 1.025 as of this morning, so hopefully it's accurate. I'm going to slow down the drip and let them acclimate for a long time and hope for the best.

Thanks

 

[Anonymous]

Be sure to maintain your temps if acclimationg for so long.

I know Fromia and Linkia need very long acclimation. Some brittle stars live in vary shallow tidepool environments that surely have rapid salinity fluctuations due to rainfall, altho I suppose the safest thing to do is go long.

I have had brittle stars and serpent stars in the past that I acclimated relatively quickly, before I heard of all this and they did fin, but I have heard of plenty of people less lucky.,...

 

[kparton]

Well, I did the best I could, I slowly drip acclimated them for 4.5 hours removing water periodically. By the time it was done, I would say the water in the bag was pretty much like the water in my tank. The biggest problem was temperature as you stated. Luckily I checked it and it was too low. So after I was done dripping, I again floated the open bag for 20 minutes before releasing the serpent stars. I also didn't let them be exposed to air, I just put the bag down in the water and released them slowly and removed the bag with the water. I figure I let a little bit of the bag water into my tank, but hopefully not enough to be a problem.

Hopefully this time, I'll be more successful with them. Right now, they're both hidden away in the rocks.

 

[Anonymous]

Sounds like a good start. If you want to lure them out, stake or place a small bit of fresh shrimp/krill/squid/clam in front, though they may wait til lights out to eat. Let's keep ourfingers crossed you have no more troubles, eh?