Drip Acclimation

[CJH0825]

I see people still doing the " floating the bag " in the tank as a acclimation process. I was wondering why it is that more people don't do the drip acclimation process?
 
I'll never float a bag again after doing the drip. It's so much easier and less stressful on the fish I think. When you float the bag, there is so much movement in the tank below them that they get stressed out. If you put them in a bucket and do the drip, they are so much more calmer. When the drip was done for my kribs, I put the net in the bucket and they both swam right into the net nice and calmly. I placed them in the tank and they freely swam out of the net. IMO I think the drip acclimation is so much better than floating the bag. 
 
Any other opinions on it?

 

[mike455555]

i use both? i float my bag and get some water from the tank in a bucket or something and set a drip going into the bag, that way i keep the temp the same as well, i guess everyone has there own ways 

 

[misterpro]

i use both? i float my bag and get some water from the tank in a bucket or something and set a drip going into the bag, that way i keep the temp the same as well, i guess everyone has there own ways 

 
Same here.
 
Because I acclimate slowly and I have no spare heater at the moment.

 

[snazy]

There's no point to float the bag if you are going to be drip acclimating them. It's an additional stressor and one needs to minimize the stress as much as you can. Plus using the bag is dangerous as you may have no surface area for oxygen and slowly suffocate the fish. They also have no room to swim and that freaks them out.
Use a bucket or other big container, and the water added will slowly mach the temperature of the tank as well as the other more important parameters, of course removing the orginal water from time to time is also important in case their water has ammonia.   You don't need a heater for drip acclimating....You just need to speed up the drip towards the end of the acclimation process to match the temperature, if it hasn't already....And depending on the difference of parameters, a drip acclimation would take something between 45min to max 3 hrs in the worse scenarios.
And as CJH0825 says, the fish are really calm and feel at home straight after drip acclimation, rather than going into hiding for days and then appear with a "mysterious" disease.

 

[r.w.girard]

Not to start the great debate all over again, but one can choose to just net the fish and add them directly into the new body of water.  If we are worried about the 15 to 60  minutes of enclosure, you should not see much of a difference as the fish will not acclimate in that time.  It would take days.  And one runs the risk of creating a spike in ammonia as temperature and pH rises [depending on respective water-qualities].
 
One's best bet: test the water in the bag and then decide how quickly the fish needs to be removed.  Brief ammonia poisoning would probably be more dangerous than the change to an established, healthy [preferably quarantine] tank.

 

[snazy]

And one runs the risk of creating a spike in ammonia as temperature and pH rises [depending on respective water-qualities].
 

 
First of all you can put Prime or other ammonia remover straight after you unpack the fish, so that issue is solved for the time being. When did ammonia kill in an hour?
Second, you obvioulsy haven't drip acclimated because if you did and tested the water while drip acclimating, you'd notice that because of the regular removal of the old water while acclimating, plus diluting the ammonia via the new water, there'll be no ammonia reading in no time. Fish won't kick the bucket for being a short time in ammonia, but will suffer stress and even die if subjected to osmotic shock due to a great difference in parameters, thus weakening their immune system too and suffering a secondary complication like being attacked by pathogenic bacteria/parasites from the tank.  Of course some healthy fish will survive that too,  hence why people still say plop and drop works. But those same people keep complaining about the shop selling them sick fish too.
 
Surely some acclimating is better than none at all, especially important for sensitive species and inverts. Hence people with marine tanks exclusively use drip acclimation...

 

[dgwebster]

I use a quarantine tank, its given a 50/50 tank water/fresh water mix, heated, filtered & kept in the dark for 24 hours before receiving low light then bright light. I keep them like that for a full week to ensure they are not carrying any disease. Its then a single lift n shift to the tank.

For putting them into the quarantine tank, straight net n dump.

 

[snazy]

For those of you that do plop and drop, have you happened to test the Ph, Gh, Kh, TDS of the water they came in, compared to yours?

 

[dgwebster]

No, but my lfs is less than 1000ft away, we are on the same water mains and he doesnt put anythigng in his water so we are pretty similar. Certainly you probably create a bigger stats difference doing a 50% water change

 

[snazy]

Certainly you probably create a bigger stats difference doing a 50% water change
 

 
Why would a 50% water change create a bigger stats difference? The only difference in my case is the extra CO2 in tap water that makes the Ph drop. But if a Ph drop due to CO2 was ever a problem, no one would be able to keep fish in a CO2 injected tank that experiences Ph swings on a daily basis.
 
The problem is when Gh, Kh, TDS is different which in my case has almost no difference between tank and tap. The TDS in the tank would be slightly higher but that's why I do 50% water changes, so it goes back down, and the difference is because of dissolved organics and nitrAtes more likely.

 

[r.w.girard]

Snazy, I have ONLY ever drip acclimated my new fish, so no reason to be snide or presume to know other's habits, methods, etc.  The question was for other opinions.
 
But the logic is that ammonia increases exponentially with temperature and pH increase.  That and osmotic shock would occur equally over an hour or a second as it would take days to change at a healthy rate.
 
But this is an old conversation.  For all interested, give the thread below a read.  It links on the second page to another conversation on the same topic:
 
http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/416904-a-about-adding-fish-that-were-shipped-to-the-tank/

 

[Blondielovesfish]

Would someone be able to talk me through the drip acclimation process or give me a link to follow?
I understand that you drop water into a bucket, bit is there anything extra that would need to be bought to do this acclimation?

 

[dgwebster]

 
Why would a 50% water change create a bigger stats difference?

Ill start with just some of what a water change on your own tank may do:

Introduce 50% water with a higher or lower ph
Introduce 50% water with less or more minerals (if you dont dose, what was in your tank may have been absorbed by plants, if you do dose, its probably lower.)
Introduce water with higher/lower co2
Introduce water with a potentially significant temperature difference.

This is just some of the potential differences. However, my lfs and I treat our water the same way. Our standing water is likely to be closer in stats than tap water to water run through a mature tank for a few days.

 

[levahe]

Doesn't the drip method apply mostly to livestock that has been shipped and likely be very stressed and in poor quality water ?

That's my take on it anyway. I always buy from a LFS so I float the bag adding a bit of water every 10 mins for 30 mins then slowly tip the contents of the bag in.

 

[dgwebster]

Once upon a time I did that method too. Then I had ich in my tank. Never again, will always quarantine where possible.