Drip acclimation question

[jejton]

How much of a difference in SG is too much when acclimating fish or inverts? My quarantine tank is generally around 1.023-1.025 but some of the stores keep their fish at 1.019-1.020. Can I still drip acclimate or should I lower the SG in the quarantine and raise it over a few days? The problem with doing that is I dont know in advance what the SG a fish is being kept at until I buy it. Recently, however, I lost a couple of fish within 2 or 3 days of buying them and I feel that perhaps it was too quick a change in SG for them. They were also fairly new imports so it could have been that too but who knows.

 

[masterswimmer]

Always keep your aquarium stable. Drip acclimate your new acquisitions and you'll have success.

swimmer

 

[jejton]

Russ, I was referring to my quarantine tank. I can manipulate that. I try to keep my DT stable and am usually succesful ( except for when that ATO, skimmer combo failure happened ). Is there a limit to the difference in SG at which I can drip acclimate?

 

[masterswimmer]

The whole purpose of drip acclimating the new arrivals is to bring the different water parameters into balance. No matter how big the difference is this would be the correct way to do it. I would absolutely drip from your QT tank. Just have more replacement water at the same QT parameters (temp, SG, pH) to add to the QT as it drips out.

HTH,
R

 

[jejton]

Ok thanks that clears things up. I wasnt sure if drip acclimation is appropriate for a large difference in SG as I often see vendors posting that they are acclimating new fish over a period of days before selling them.

 

[masterswimmer]

We, as vendors, like to keep new arrivals for a couple of weeks before selling because acclimation can go perfect. That doesn't mean a fish won't have parasites and infect an entire tank with it. Other diseases might not be apparent when the fish first arrives either.

We don't sell right away for the same reasons you don't release a new animal into your DT. You QT for the same reason we do. Neither of us want to infect an entire tank. We also have a commitment to the buyer to supply healthy fish. We can't possibly guaranty that if we receive a fish and sell it the next day it is healthy. A couple of weeks is a much safer bet.

Russ