Shipment water salinity

[Piotrek]

Just a warning to everyone.

I've received a shipment of 3 fish from a store ~500km away. Not that far, shipping time less then 24h.
Fish looked healthy in the bags, so I opened them and measured the salinity:
Foxface - 35ppt
Zebrassoma - 15ppt
Centropyge - 15ppt

My system - 33ppt

I measured a few times suspecting there was something wrong with my Hanna Salinity tester. Nothing wrong with it.
Apparently the LFS keeps salinity of 15ppt in 1 of their systems.

I've let them know (no response yet).

I know some people just add a few cups of aquarium water to the bag during acclimation. That would put the salinity nowhere near the one from my tank.

Measure, measure, measure... everything you can.

 

[christinna77]

Yep, I think salinity shocks like this may be responsible for more fish deaths than we care to admit. So many times when I ask someone what the salinity was in the bag, they have no idea because they never measured it. They always say they acclimated the fish by adding cups of water, but like you said, that's not reliable when the salinity difference is so huge.

I always ask ahead and then also measure it upon arrival, even if I've ordered from the same store several times before. I also keep extra RODI water ready in case I need to lower the salinity in my QT.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Just a warning to everyone.

I've received a shipment of 3 fish from a store ~500km away. Not that far, shipping time less then 24h.
Fish looked healthy in the bags, so I opened them and measured the salinity:
Foxface - 35ppt
Zebrassoma - 15ppt
Centropyge - 15ppt

My system - 33ppt

I measured a few times suspecting there was something wrong with my Hanna Salinity tester. Nothing wrong with it.
Apparently the LFS keeps salinity of 15ppt in 1 of their systems.

I've let them know (no response yet).

I know some people just add a few cups of aquarium water to the bag during acclimation. That would put the salinity nowhere near the one from my tank.

Measure, measure, measure... everything you can.

I've heard of low salinity before when shipping, but 15ppt does seem quite low for a store. Hope everything is ok!

 

[Piotrek]

It took like 15 liters of water to get the salinity to more then 30, at which point I put the fish in the tank (to not extend the acclimation for too long). So far so good.
I'm curious if the LFS will reply in any way. I once reported law salinity to another LFS and they said I measured it wrong, because it should be higher. This leads to a conclusion, that asking LFS for salinity will get you a number you can use to play lottery.

 

[christinna77]

It took like 15 liters of water to get the salinity to more then 30, at which point I put the fish in the tank (to not extend the acclimation for too long). So far so good.
I'm curious if the LFS will reply in any way. I once reported law salinity to another LFS and they said I measured it wrong, because it should be higher. This leads to a conclusion, that asking LFS for salinity will get you a number you can use to play lottery.

At this low salinity, it's not safe to increase it by more than 2-3 ppt per day. Ideally, you should take about a week to bring it back up to 35 ppt, since you're basically in hyposalinity territory at this point.

 

[martin.a]

I heard that shops do this to keep parasites subdued.

 

[Piotrek]

At this low salinity, it's not safe to increase it by more than 2-3 ppt per day. Ideally, you should take about a week to bring it back up to 35 ppt, since you're basically in hyposalinity territory at this point.

Fully agreed. I was sadly not prepared for this. Lesson learned.