Acclimation

[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]

Originally Posted by 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.

QFT!


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]

Originally Posted by 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

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/a...orals-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.