Acclimation

[Dearth]

Which type of acclimation type do you use for your coral/fish/critters?

I use a form of the simplified method as when I used the drip type I actually lost about half my critters/fish with simplified I have yet to lose any fish, CuC or critters don't know why as they are more sensitive to water variations but with me simplified works

[Madreefer]

I'm one of the guilty ones.
Float bag in sump 10 mins.
Take item out of bag and put in tank.
When I started out I did the drip acclimation. Never lost anything. The last 5 years or so I've just been floating and haven't lost anything that way either. Call it luck, laziness or just plain cocky. There never seems to be enough time in the day nowadays and I've pretty much stopped stressing and worrying about my tank.

[Aquattro]

I'm one of the guilty ones.
Float bag in sump 10 mins.
Take item out of bag and put in tank.
When I started out I did the drip acclimation. Never lost anything. The last 5 years or so I've just been floating and haven't lost anything that way either. Call it luck, laziness or just plain cocky. There never seems to be enough time in the day nowadays and I've pretty much stopped stressing and worrying about my tank.

This saves me having to type out a whole story. Same here, no losses. :)

[Madreefer]

Sorry. I'm long winded:biggrin:

[Aquattro]

Sorry. I'm long winded:biggrin:

I'm lazy, so it worked out all around -lol

[marie]

I'm one of the guilty ones.
Float bag in sump 10 mins.
Take item out of bag and put in tank.
When I started out I did the drip acclimation. Never lost anything. The last 5 years or so I've just been floating and haven't lost anything that way either. Call it luck, laziness or just plain cocky. There never seems to be enough time in the day nowadays and I've pretty much stopped stressing and worrying about my tank.


Me too, no losses here either :mrgreen:

[Magma]

I'm one of the guilty ones.
Float bag in sump 10 mins.
Take item out of bag and put in tank.
When I started out I did the drip acclimation. Never lost anything. The last 5 years or so I've just been floating and haven't lost anything that way either. Call it luck, laziness or just plain cocky. There never seems to be enough time in the day nowadays and I've pretty much stopped stressing and worrying about my tank.

+1 on this.

I call it the Simple Simple Method.

I did the whole float the bag, drip into a bucket, remove water but I found it just sucked so much time out of my day if I bought a coral or fish on a whim.

[Magickiwi]

I use the CPR drip acclimator. It does all the add water etc for me. I just plop the little devil into the reservoir, set the drip rate and it's off to the races.

[brizzo]

Simplified method.

Most often live stocked is shipped to me, so I figure why waste time drip acclimating, get them warm and into the tank asap.

[intarsiabox]

I don't so much as drip as just pour a cup of tank water into the bag after floating for 10 min then float for another five.

[Kryptic4L]

i lost so much stuff doing it the slow and steady way. I finally said f-it.

Now its toss bag in, when i remeber that i have something floating i go back open it toss in some "prime" plus some tank water. wait a few and chuck him in.


When doing some research on why i was losing so much crap right from the store, Apparently the theory goes, bag water is dirty once the bag is open it gets toxic fast. thus the prime.

most store water is 0.21 from what i have seen, My water is 0.24 thus the short transitional phase.

Fish have been going in the tank on my last few purchases better then any i have had in the past they seem to skip that getting comfy stage and seem to have some pep in their step.

[JmeJReefer]

+1 on simple method. No losses to date. Even did a move where temp fluctuated retardedly and still no losses. Pure luck I suppose....

[stephengammage]

All i do is float the bag after 10 min add 1 shot of water wait 5 min add another cup wait 5 add to tank. This eliminated losses to my more sensitive corals

[Proteus]

I check the salinity of store water and depending on the fish.
Most ofthe time its a float the bag but if salts off ill drip

[wreck]

float the bag dump fish into net and then into tank.

[newbie2]

I don't so much as drip as just pour a cup of tank water into the bag after floating for 10 min then float for another five. me too

[Foxface]

I'm one of the guilty ones.
Float bag in sump 10 mins.
Take item out of bag and put in tank.
When I started out I did the drip acclimation. Never lost anything. The last 5 years or so I've just been floating and haven't lost anything that way either. Call it luck, laziness or just plain cocky. There never seems to be enough time in the day nowadays and I've pretty much stopped stressing and worrying about my tank.


+1

[Coral Hoarder]

fish get bag in the tank and about 30 mins ading water
corals get diped then chucked in
inverts get the same a s fish

[spit.fire]

depends on what im putting in my tank

fish i float until temp is the same, dump them into a net to strain the water out and throw em in the tank

same general idea with corals

for more sensitive stuff like clams and starfish and stuff i just syphon into a container with an airline hose with a valve on it till the bucket is full (approx 2g container)

[mark]

All i do is float the bag after 10 min add 1 shot of water wait 5 min add another cup wait 5 add to tank. This eliminated losses to my more sensitive corals

+1

[asylumdown]

I chose 'my own method', which consists of removing fish/coral/invert from the bag it came in, then placing it in whatever tank it's going in to next. If it's a fish from one of two stores in town that I know have whacked out salinity, I might check the salinity and think "hmmm, that's pretty high/low", then proceed to dump the fish in to the vessel with the correct salinity, but most times I don't check so I don't feel the need to clench for the first 5 minutes the fish is in the QT tank.

If it's a coral, I take it out of the bag it came in, pry/cut/smash it off whatever base or rock it came on, use surgical tools to scrape away any portion that's dead or has algae growing on it, drop it in a bucket of my tank water, then proceed to submerge it in caustic, toxic chemicals that kills anything with a pulse and a few things that don't.

If it's a hard shelled invert like a snail (but only if it has a trap door than closes completely), I will sometimes take them to the sink, irritate them until they close right up, then aggressively brush them off under running tap water using an old tooth brush, holding my thumb tightly over the opening so that freshwater never actually touches the trap door. If it's got an algae growing on it that is not currently in my tank, I will follow that up with a brushing with dilute bleach. I follow the same procedure for exposed LPS skeletons that I can't break off without harming the coral, though with much, much greater care to not get fresh water or bleach on any actual tissue. Once rinsed, in to the tank they go.

I've never lost a fish, invert, or a coral doing it this way, so I'm probably going to keep doing it. Some might argue it's not really an acclimation procedure however.

[JDigital]

I'm one of the guilty ones.
Float bag in sump 10 mins.
Take item out of bag and put in tank.
When I started out I did the drip acclimation. Never lost anything. The last 5 years or so I've just been floating and haven't lost anything that way either. Call it luck, laziness or just plain cocky. There never seems to be enough time in the day nowadays and I've pretty much stopped stressing and worrying about my tank.

QFT! :mrgreen:


I did setup a QT tank at the office though when I nearly lost my entire tank to Marine Velvet. After the Velvet outbreak I QT'd all the fish I currently have in the 180G and have had no losses since. Tank is maxed out on fish though so might tear the QT down for now. Pain in the ass to keep up and running.

[Koleswrath]

I just lost a $150 Mad Jelly order by dripping. I'm guessing my house is too cold and I was dripping too slowly to keep the drip bucket temp up.

The irony of this is that I've always just floated the bag, added a cup of tank water, wait, repeat, etc. but I decided to drip this order because it was my largest purchase to date and I wanted to be "extra careful".
Never had a problem with floating the bag.

I'm surprised to see there are more than a few other people who have had bad luck with dripping too as it's recommended everywhere. Makes me feel a bit better about it. But just a bit.

Greg

[asylumdown]

I just lost a $150 Mad Jelly order by dripping. I'm guessing my house is too cold and I was dripping too slowly to keep the drip bucket temp up.

The irony of this is that I've always just floated the bag, added a cup of tank water, wait, repeat, etc. but I decided to drip this order because it was my largest purchase to date and I wanted to be "extra careful".
Never had a problem with floating the bag.

I'm surprised to see there are more than a few other people who have had bad luck with dripping too as it's recommended everywhere. Makes me feel a bit better about it. But just a bit.

Greg

These two articles are where I got my general 'theory' for how I acclimate corals:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-11/eb/index.php

and

http://reefbuilders.com/2013/12/12/acclimating-corals-wrong-2/

The first one talks about how the author went from having less than 50% survival on shipped corals to 100% survival by shipping them out of water, wrapped in nothing but seawater dampened newspaper. The have some interesting theories as to why that might be.

I've also read other articles, specifically relating to acclimation of fish, that warn against aggressively aerating the water they come shipped in because as the oxygen levels in the bag fall during shipment and CO2 levels rise, ammonia is also being released from normal fish respiration. But as CO2 rises, the water also becomes more acidic, which drives the ammonium/ammonia equilibrium towards higher concentrations of relatively non-toxic ammonium. You get the bag and aerate the crap out of it, and the pH spikes creating potentially lethal concentrations of ammonia.

All three of those things could have potentially occurred to your mad jelly corals: issues with water fouling talked about in the reef keeping article, the temperature issue you identified, and an issue with ammonia once the water became aerated and the pH went back up to 'normal' sea water levels.

It's why as a general rule I try to get my corals out of the water they came in as quickly as possible, especially if they've been shipped. After a long flight they're literally stewing in their own sewage.

[monza]

Simplified drip method like most but then into a QT. Six weeks min. for fish a week for corals dipping them daily if I find the time.
I'm surprised at how many of you don't use a QT.

[Samw]

I've lost entire batches of trochus snails when I didn't acclimate long enough. Other existing snails and livestock in my tank were fine. Just the new ones died over a few days. The reason I think it was due to not acclimating long enough was because I bought more snails from the same store later and acclimated those ones longer and they all survived. This has happened several times before where all new snails died over a few days so I'm suspecting that it was from not acclimating long enough. I also lost a few linkia starfish but who knows if that was because the store didn't acclimate them long enough or if it was me, since starfish take a while before they break down. I like to acclimate starfish over many hours.

[Kait]

I haven't put anything overly sensitive in my tank. I've always done the bag in, wait 10 minutes, cup of water, wait 5 more, as others have stated. I've had carpet surfers and others that have only lasted a few weeks (shrimp, both of them). So I figure that my losses aren't really because of my acclimation procedures.

I've never lost a coral, although one would probably say that I have never bought anything fancy… just zoas and then had a few candy canes and frogspawn donated.