Acclimating shipped fish

[Viking_Reefing]

Hi guys!

I will be receiving a couple of fish next week. The deal is that I’m picking them up at the LFS in the bags straight from the wholesaler. They are being shipped from Germany to Sweden so the shipping should take about 18-24h.

I’m a little unsure of how to proceed with the acclimatization.

I’ve previously imported stuff myself but at that time I had a specific system to receive the fish. What I used to do years back was test salinity/PH and match the tank water to those parameters and after that just do the old “float and dump” to avoid any issues with ammonia.

Unfortunately it isn’t really an option to set one up at this time.

The situation as it stands is that these fish will go straight in to the DT which obviously means that I can’t match the parameters in the tank to that of the water in the bag. They will be shipped in a specific gravity of about 1.022-23 and my tank runs at about 1.025-26 and the PH of the water in the bag will obviously have dropped to about 7-7,5 (at least according to my previous experience).
What would be the best course of action here?

Float and dump anyways and just let the fish handle the change of PH/salinity or drip acclimate and risk ammonia problems (I know that my lfs acclimates their fish this way).

My first thought was to add prime and drip acclimate but unfortunately it seems to be unavailable locally (my lfs managed to sell their last bottle by accident even though I asked them to put it on lay away...) and I probably won’t receive it in time if I order it online.

Any input would be appreciated

 

[cmaxwell39]

Do you know if the wholesaler holds the fish in tanks that have low levels of copper in them? If so, you don't want to use prime anyway since prime and copper are a bad mix for fish.

I would do a short drip acclimation on the fish. If the fish aren't shipped in copper of any sort and you can get your hands on some prime then I would do this. If you can't get your hands on prime I would still drip them. The difference in salinity is not that large so you could probably get away with about an hour drip and this would limit the amount of time the fish are in ammonia and a higher pH level where that ammonia becomes toxic.

Good luck. I hope the fish do well for you. What are you getting?

 

[Biglew11]

18-24 hours i'd do a drip acclimation for 30 minutes to an hour, then float the bag to match temp 15 minutes. then let the fish go in the tank, without adding the bag water to the tank

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Do you know if the wholesaler holds the fish in tanks that have low levels of copper in them? If so, you don't want to use prime anyway since prime and copper are a bad mix for fish.

I would do a short drip acclimation on the fish. If the fish aren't shipped in copper of any sort and you can get your hands on some prime then I would do this. If you can't get your hands on prime I would still drip them. The difference in salinity is not that large so you could probably get away with about an hour drip and this would limit the amount of time the fish are in ammonia and a higher pH level where that ammonia becomes toxic.

Good luck. I hope the fish do well for you. What are you getting?

I’ve checked for that very reason and no, they don’t use copper. Hopefully I can get my hands on some prime but I’m not holding my breath.

Ok, I was leaning towards that option myself so I think that that’s what I’ll do.

As do I! I’m getting an Achilles and perhaps a gold flake angel, it was a bit unclear if all of the angels were spoken for or not.

 

[cmaxwell39]

Very nice fish you are getting. Hope they acclimate well and we will need some pictures once you get them.

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Very nice fish you are getting. Hope they acclimate well and we will need some pictures once you get them.

Definitely. I will update my build thread with some new pictures on Wednesday

 

[Sallstrom]

If you have access to CO2 you could take out a bucket with tank water and bubble CO2 to get the same pH as the transport water. Also adjust salinity and temp. Then move the fish over to the bucket with a net.
Then start a the usual process of changing some water until it’s close to the tank parameters.

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Very nice fish you are getting. Hope they acclimate well and we will need some pictures once you get them.

Everything went well apart from that the goldflake didn’t show up. I did manage to get my hands on some prime so that probably helped tons.
I updated my build thread with some pictures of the little guy