***Acclimation: Any NEW FISH or INVERT: NEW: CHECK THIS OUT

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Sealed bag: the fish respires co2 into the water. This drops the ph. The fish poos. But the low ph keeps the pollution in the form of harmless ammonium.

Open bag: co2, trapped in the water and held there by the pressure, gasses off quickly and leaves the water. PH then rises fast, causing non-toxic ammonium to become toxic ammonia.

This assumes non-chemist me has got the rises and falls the right way around: but this is what happens. It was ammonium, which doesn't smell and is harmless, and mutates rapidly to stinky, highly toxic ammonia.
 
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First, thanks Sk8r for the great info.

I just want to double check on the filter media. I will be running a canister filter (eheim). So all I need is carbon and filter floss and I will be good?

I'm pretty sure I already know the answer but I will be getting my first fishes soon (pair of baby onyx) and I don't want anything bad to happen.

thanks for all your help

:beer:
 
I would say yes. Just keep track of the ammonia, and don't let that huge filter (mine is such a wimp by comparison!) go unscrutinized. Open it up and doublecheck; I change stained floss, figuring what the heck, it's less grief than the alternative!

Just as a note, you can tell how a system (any tank) is responding by testing often during its early stage and logging the results...you can have a dozen 'good' results, but if the trend is toward 'not-good' and the rate of change is accelerating or decelerating, you can head it off before it gets any worse at all. (And if your memory is like mine, it's "Was 9 am a .7 or a .6?"---I have trouble with "Did I just read a .6?"]
 
Sk8r, thanks for the great thread. Info that defo needs to be shared. I've got a concern about what you are suggesting though on the salinity. Are you suggesting 1/1000th of a 0/00 or SG? Regardless, I think that is too fine of a line to draw. Salinities can change more than that when it rains, in drought periods or even with depth, so I don't think fish would be affected by salinity differences that you suggest. I agree not to dump a fish from 25ppt to 35ppt water because of osmotic shock, but going from 34 to 35 would have no effect.

Just my .02 worth, but again thanks for the great thread. Very helpful.

Wes
 
So as a total newbie, let me recap to make sure I'm following.

Figure out what the salinity of your dealer is, then match your QT tank to it before you get your new creature. Doesn't sound too hard, unless you're dealing with an online dealer, but I would think even then they would be able to tell you with a phone call. Upon arrival, as soon as you open the bag, toss your newest specimen into the QT tank.

Is the temperature difference between the bag water and the QT tank an issue? Should you float the bag for a half hour or so to get the temperatures matched before you open the bag?

Over the next day or so adjust the salinity of the QT tank so it matches your display tank. QT your critter for a month.

Am I following this all correctly? I'm going to go search it right now, but could I please get a little more details on what really constitutes a good Qt tank setup? Specific recommended filters would be amazing. Also you mention an observation tank for coral... could you please elaborate?

Thank you so much, this site is absolutely invaluable, and I don't even have a tank yet!
 
I always use SG. Easier. And while fish in the wild meet change all the time, they can vote with their fins, and move deeper if they're uncomfortable. The incoming fish is already traumatized, has now been through what any of us would call a really hard day, and is about ready for as easy a ride into calm comforting water as he can get.

Salinity is quite easy to match with a refractometer, and new salt water comes in at 1.024 SG, which is exactly where many fish stores keep it. If you have to push that line, that's one thing, but since the window between max salinity (1.026) and salt mix salinity (1.024) it's not that big a deal, in my own estimation. Some fish stores keep their fish stock at 1.021, but not under. So just to minimize ALL stress, why not set the qt at that, and just change it by letting natural evaporation handle the rise? The specimens, as I observe it, go through enough in shipping and handling, and if a close match on salinity is so easy to arrange, I'd rather recommend that.

Re salt-instruments: I do recommend a refractometer as a very basic tool for a reef that can ease that transition: what neither of us has mentioned is what happens when somebody misreads or doesn't clean a swing-arm hydrometer, and has the balance much further off than he thinks. So while I own one, just in case, I never ever trust the darned thing, and I'm old enough to remember when those and the floaters were all a hobbyist could get.
In the qt, a floating measure is not that bad: if it breaks, it's a barebottom tank anyway; they're pretty accurate, and at least they don't give you one reading one minute and something way off the next. They clean easily, being all-glass, and you can go from hospital to quarantine use with them without a fuss.
 
JByer, the very first post, section A: complete specs for a qt tank. I just use plain carbon wrapped in floss---do it myself: it's cheaper. I've even been known to use new synthetic pillow stuffing (buy in hobby store by the bag) for floss. For the rest, you've got it nailed. You want a heater, light not so much; but you need to be able to see your fish well, to be sure he's staying healthy. You need ammonia/nitrate test strips, and use them one or two times daily, to be sure you're ok. Keep the thumps and bumps down for the first several days, let the fish calm down, and spend a little time getting him used to your presence, and the idea of food. But don't overfeed! A fish can go better 2 weeks without food than 1 hour in oxygen-short water!
 
Sealed bag: the fish respires co2 into the water. This drops the ph. The fish poos. But the low ph keeps the pollution in the form of harmless ammonium.

Open bag: co2, trapped in the water and held there by the pressure, gasses off quickly and leaves the water. PH then rises fast, causing non-toxic ammonium to become toxic ammonia.


Thank you Sk8r, that makes sense now.
 
If you mean acclimating starfish, beneficial nudibranchs, urchins, chitons, cowries and abalones, which are constant feeders, count them as an invert. If it arrives with identical salinity, good: give it a rinse in salt water to clear away or at least thin out any bag water clinging to it and it's good to go. If not, you can take them over in a matter of an hour or so. Set up your qt tank as the waystation: you don't have to fill it all the way, and in the case of some of these under-rock creatures that have incredibly strong attachment to rock or glass, I'd do this in a container other than glass, like a plastic liner in a bowl, because you can hurt them trying to get them unstuck: a surface that will bend is much easier, though I've seen some stuck so well that the answer is to drop the whole bowl into the tank and retrieve it later. Gradually bring the salinity to match your tank, and it's good to go, after a little while, say 30 minutes, at the matching salinity. This gives the last adjustment time to work all the way through its tissues before you change its environment yet again and drop it into a place where fish may be curious about it. Just a hint on inverts: if you have fish like wrasses or dottybacks, which tend to bedevil anything new, tank-twilight is a good time to go ahead and put a new critter in, which lets it get rightside up and wander off to a place of safety without hassle. This is particularly true with the shellfish, which generally prefer the dark: you only see some of these out and about by flashlight examination of your tank.
[One caution on starfish in general, just as a type: most classic-shaped stars are not at all reef friendly, and those that are reef-friendly (the linckias) should not be in a tank younger than a year or so, or owned by anybody who has not had a couple of years' experience, because their feeding habits are not well understood and they are quite fragile. They seem to eat film on rocks, and are otherwise expert-only.]
 
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Vandal, you're good: do take only the dark ones: the green serpent stars have been known to bother fish.

The regular dark brittle stars are great cleaners, and I am here to tell you, they do reproduce in tanks! They like to live under rocks, and usually only come out for food that hits the bottom.
 
Sk8r tank you for info.I just have a quastion about the salinity.I read that the salinity drop is not harmfull,so can I put the new arrived fish wich been in the bag for more than 30 hours to hypo?
 
You can drop salinity safely from equal salinity to hyposalinity over a 24 hour period. Start with identical salinity and start adjusting it by adding fresh water at a rate that will reach hypo in 24 hours. When the period of hypo is done, of course, just reverse the process until back to regular salinity.
 
Tank you very much,it is very helpfull.ones you told me that medicating fish in hypo is dengarus.What do you tink about using PraziPro in Hypo?
 
Prazipro has a pretty good reputation. It seems to be pretty benign. I've done additional research on meds and hyposalinity, and some more recent sources (not all) do say that medication during hypo is safe if both are correctly administered. Suggest you look up "OST" or "osmotic shock therapy" and make your own decisions on that: there's quite a lot of writing on that topic. Hypo is not recommended for cartilaginous fishes (sharks and rays, etc) and seahorses should not go below 1.010. Particular attention should be paid to ammonia, because hypo can depress biological filtration.

Personally I do not like to tell new hobbyists to rely on biological filtration during quarantine, because of the difficulties of getting it correctly managed under all circumstances, and the likelihood that a new hobbyist will not own the appropriate test kits, will not always think of all the steps in managing such a filter, and is more likely to overfeed. A 'crashed' filter can send things in a bad direction very quickly, as in, hours, while one might be away at work. I think it much safer simply to change out the media to keep the tank very, very clean.
 
I only use sponge filtr,but yes I get that problem.the no2 rises to more than 1.6.
last time I just simply moved my fish to an other bigger tank with same powerhead sponge filter.What is your advise?
 
I use only floss and carbon, and throw it out and install new whenever the floss looks stained.
 
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