Beginner seeking help

[Soulofamind]

Hi everyone! Me and family currently own a 40g tank and love it so far! But I have a question and wasn't sure where to ask but in this section. It has to deal with buying new fish or any type of lifeforms for our aquarium.

-Is it necessary to assimilate anything new into our fish tank (including invertabrates)?
-And how long should we let them assimilate for?
-Since we recieve the animals in plastic bags (water included )... is it necessary to poke holes into the bag so the water can mix with our water?

Oh man.. any information about this will be great! Thank you for any help or advice!

[aussiereefer82]

Welcome to TRT, you have found a great site.

To answer your question you can do it a couple of different ways, and yes you have to acclimate everything.

1. Tip the fish including the water from the bag into a bucket and use a piece of airline tubing to drip water slowly into the bucket. This will acclime the fish to the salinity pH of your tank slowly.

2.Use the bag to float the fish and put a cup of your water in every 10mins and remove a cup from the bag and discard it.

Do both these methods for 45mins-1hr and never put the LFS water in your tank, its a great way to spread disease and other nasties.

Hope that helps.

[drsyme]

Originally Posted by aussiereefer82

Do both these methods for 45mins-1hr and never put the LFS water in your tank, its a great way to spread disease and other nasties.

And if it is a fish from a LFS it may very well have copper in the water (the LFS uses it as a disease prevention) and you dont want that added to the water with corals.

here is a link to acclimation procedures:

http://www.liveaquaria.com/general/g...3319&subref=AI

[Soulofamind]

Thank you soo much! =) These tips are very helpful ^_^

[btang]

I like the drip method. I use a air gang value, get the water flowing thru the air tube (drip). I put the fish from the bag into a pale and drip water from the tank. I wait until the volumn has doubled then I'm ready. Dont put the water into the tank. Most LFS do use copper in their fish tanks. I do the same with corals, never put the corals and fish into the same bucket (copper issues again). Good luck.

[VWD]

I agree with and like Btang method of acclimation of both corals and fish. Never put the water in Your tank. and if You can set one up a small OT tank will help. seem like a real hassle at first until You introduce something You don't want to in the tank and can't treat it in Your display tank.



Vince

[skeety]

Not sure if anyone else does this, but to make the acclimation even MORE gradual, I tie a knot in the tube, right about where it goes into the bucket. This makes the dripping even slower. I do it anywhere from 30 min to an hour, depending on the heartyness of the critter I've bough.

ie. Damsels - 30 minutes.
Any coral - an hour.

[wharyat]

Echinoderms should be acclimated for 2-3 hours, they are very sensitive to change. I use drip acclimation.

[gearbox]

Hope you don't mind me chipping in but I saw a post earlier about making sure you don't take some types of coral out of the water, i.e. bagging them in the water. When you use a bucket to aclimate how do you move the coral to the tank without taking it out of the water? Hope this isn't a silly question