New Fish Acclimation

[DHJac]

All of the LFS here sell brackish fish out of freshwater tanks.  What is your acclimation method when adding fish to a tank with already elevated SG levels?  
 
My tank has been running since last July and is currently at about 1.08. It houses scats, monos, mollies and a knight goby.  A pair of the mollies and a scat were added recently. The mollies adjusted to the higher SG water quickly but the scat that was added this weekend seems to be struggling. My method for all the fish has been to put them in a 5 gal bucket with the water from the LFS and then run a drip line for about 45 min to the bucket.  I add a small air line to the bucket and after each 15 min interval, remove some of the water from the bucket to help increase the SG.  So far this method has worked very well, but the new scat seems very weak and is not swimming well.  I had one other scat that I added to the tank early on that also struggled and eventually died.  
 
If anyone can recommend a better method, I'm all ears.  
 
Dave

 

[RRaquariums]

Maybe run the drip line slower so it takes like 2-3 hours I know a lot of saltwater fish keepers that do it that way.
Sorry I don't have any other ideas
Also you may not want to get brackish fish from a store that keeps them in none brackish tanks since that may make them waek to start with.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

There are actually tons of scientific research on this topic. What it boils down to is that different fish handle change in salinity differently. In many cases the change must take longer than typical hobby acclimation times which vary from 30 mins or less to a few hours. For any serious changes in parameters a drip acclimation will be uselss as the physiological changes that occur often take from 3 days to more than a week to occur. Here a a few snippets;
 

 
The marble goby, Oxyeleotris marmorata, considered a freshwater fish, was able to hypoosmoregulate successfully during 14 days of acclimation to seawater (30‰) following 6 days of progressive increase in salinity.

from http/www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1095643309010307
 

 
We examined genomic and nongenomic changes to gills of zebrafish as they were progressively acclimated from moderately hard freshwater to typical soft water over 7 days and held in soft water for another 7 days..............
Levels of mRNA for ECaC increased fourfold after day 6, with an associated increase in ECaC protein levels after 1 wk in soft water. CA-1 and CA-2 exhibited a 1.5- and 6-fold increase in gene expression
on days 6 and 5, respectively. Likewise, there was a fivefold increase in NHE-2 expression after day 6. Surprisingly, CTR-1 mRNA showed a large transient increase (over threefold) on day 6, while H-ATPase mRNA did not change. These data demonstrate a high degree of phenotypic plasticity in zebrafish gills exposed to an ion-poor environment.

from http/bio.mcmaster.ca/fcl/grantm/web/Physiol.%20Genomics%202007%20Craig.pdf
 
Yes the above are technical, but the key is the number of days they acclimated the fish for and how long it took for the physiological changes to show up. The point is most of us do not have the proper setups nor knowledge to acclimate most fish to real changes in parameters. Moreover, we are not well informed about which species can handle changes better and which need a much slower acclimation process.
 
if you are curious about the practices and methods involved in the transport of fish from where they originate to where they get sold to stores and other vendors, here is a pretty good read. "Recent developments and improvements in ornamental fish packaging systems for air transport" http/www.vliz.be/imisdocs/publications/54592.pdf..

 

[DHJac]

Thanks for the papers TTA.  While I am far from an expert on the conditions hatcheries use for juvenile brackish species such as scats, it would not surprise me if they were raised in freshwater and had not been exposed to brackish water until they reached the customer's tank.  That being said, brackish species that travel in estuaries can see large swings in SG over short periods and can adapt.  That was the reason I assumed a drip method would be the best way to acclimate them as it, to a small degree, replicates the fish traveling from a freshwater area to an area of increasing salinity.  Perhaps this is not the case though if it is the fishes first exposure to brackish conditions.  

 

[iliveinazoo]

I think Rraquariums may have hit the nail on the head by saying that the LFS keeping the Scat in freshwater may have weakened it. In my experience with Scats I always felt that they preferred higher salinities - SG1.008@25°C and above.

Out of the many fish that I have brought back from an LFS the only species I've had trouble with are Scats - out of 5 bought 2 died almost immediately, though they looked OK in the shop they could barely swim by the time I got them home (1\2 hour drive), this also makes me think that they don't cope with travel as well as some.

That said you don't mention the size of your tank or the water parameters such as ammonia and nitrite

 

[DHJac]

The tank is 48"Lx18"Wx30"H and all the water parameters are good.  All of the other fish are very healthy and active.  When I kept brackish fish in the past, it was the monos that I always had trouble with while the scats seemed almost indestructible.  I shudder at the thought of some of my mistakes back in my college days when I had less of an understanding of proper fish maintenance but one time at the end of the school year I had to transport my tank back home.  It was a 9 hr drive and I had one scat that was a couple of years old that made that journey with me.  It was a 20 G hex tank and all I did was drain the tank down to about 5" of water, with him still in there and made the trip with him still sloshing around.  I don't even think I kept any of the filter media.  But when I got home and set the tank back up, he was happy as can be and lived for a few years after that.  Crazy.
 
I made a trip to one of the LFS today that normally doesn't keep a brackish species tank but always has a few scats and monos in their marine section and they finally had a tank set up with a few monos in it that actually had a small amount of salt in it.  Maybe it's a sign of good things to come.  
 
Has anyone ever ordered brackish fish from LiveAqaria.com?  Do they ship from freshwater tanks as well?

 

[DHJac]

Here is a video of the tank.  The red scat at the beginning has been in there for about 5 mo while the green scat that shows up at the 17 s mark is the new one.  He is doing better but still is a little shaky in the higher flow areas of the tank.  I have been hand feeding him the last few days because the monos are pigs and destroy anything that hits the water.  Hopefully he gets a little stronger and makes a home of it.
 

 

[iliveinazoo]

Nice tank, I used to love my scats!I used to stick a lettuce leaf or cucumber slice in daily for them and they used to go mad for it