Adjusting Fish to Lower Salinity

I

infinityends

New member
I have finally gotten my FOWLR tank ready. Will be nice to be able to keep some fish I am interested in without worrying about coral nippers.

I have a few fish that I will be moving from my reef tank into the fowlr. But because the fowlr is a fish only tank. I currently have it running at 1.017 vs 1.026 for my reef.

I've read up on hypo salinity treatment because I know the salinity swing can stress the fish out, and from the math, it is suggested to bring the salinity down by .005/day. But that is also to slowly adjust an already sick/stressed fish to a much lower salinity.

But I was curious on input of if the fish should be stepped down over a couple days. In which case it would be simpler to bump up the salinity a little to a level in between the current salinity and reef salinity, and slowly bring the tank down as I perform water changes.

Or if giving them a long drip acclimation would be sufficient.

For reference, I will be moving a pair of nebula clowns that I won in a raffle at an event with my local club, they have been chilling in my sump for a few months.

And, assuming I can trap or catch the fish. I will also be moving my yellow eye tang, which I assume will be a little more sensitive to the shift than the clowns.

Thanks for any input, I guess I've never really though about the salinity on my LFS tanks and the potential swing between them and my reef. I know they have it posted, but I can't remember if they keep the tanks at fish only or reef salinity off the top of my head.
 
Hypo salinity is not healthy for fish long-term. What's your reasoning behind the low salinity in the DT. 1.017 is not effective against ich, it is only effective at 1.009 and has to be maintain at that level. Also 1.017 is still not recommend in a FOWLR. Your salinity should at least be at 1.022 for the health of the fish.
 
Hypo salinity was only mentioned because I was reading about the process of acclimating fish to a lower salinity. Guess I didn't make that clear. But I'm not intending to run the tank at hyposalinity.

As far as the 1.017. I'll bump up the salinity. It has been a while since I have ran a fish only tank. And not sure why that number was in my head. Which also makes the salinity swing a lesser issue and kind of negates the need for this post.

I'll just give them a nice long drip acclimation.
 
Be careful when if you get fish from online vendors. Once you open the bag you will have a spike of ammonia which can be harmful. The best thing to do is to match your QT to the vendor salinity and adjust from there. That you will only have to temp acclimate and drop them right in once they are temp acclimate. Then adjust your QT salinity to the salinity of your DT.
 
scooter31707 said:
Be careful when if you get fish from online vendors. Once you open the bag you will have a spike of ammonia which can be harmful. The best thing to do is to match your QT to the vendor salinity and adjust from there. That you will only have to temp acclimate and drop them right in once they are temp acclimate. Then adjust your QT salinity to the salinity of your DT.
Click to expand...

Exactly.
 
Seems like my initial reason for this thread wasn't made clear enough. And I'm sure a couple of the notes are partially due to my low post count. I'm just on my local club's forum a lot more actively than here on RC. But I've been in the hobby for a few years now, but there is obviously always more to learn. Maybe using the term FOWLR is getting people confused and the term isn't used as widely on this forum? Fish Only With Live Rock

The point of the question was because I will be moving 3 fish from my 90g reef into a 75g FOWLR that I am setting up to house additional livestock and fish that I would have to be wary of eating my corals.

This tank was never intended for use as hypo salinity, or QT purposes. It is simply a fish only system to house coral nippers that I want, but am unwilling to risk my coral with.

The post was really just asking about adjusting the fish from a standard reef salinity 1.026 to the lower salinity I will be using in the FOWLR 1.020 (Upped the salinity a bit since the initial post) as fish are more tolerant of lower salinity, and this cuts down on salt costs.

I appreciate the note about the ammonia spike in shipped fish. Although I was aware of this from placing orders for CUC inverts online, and I didn't mention ordering fish online so I'm not sure what sparked that information to be thrown out. Regardless it was a good thing to point out. But I generally just special order at my LFS because a member of my local club works there and is a pretty awesome guy to go BS with about fish.

Reading over the post, I feel like some of it seems kind of snippy.
Not my intent, but I also don't feel like trying to rephrase it.

I appreciate the suggestions, overall with the increased salinity in the fish only system, I'm not too worried about just giving the fish a long drip acclimation and calling it a day.
 
I was told from my LFS that hypo-salinity was not good for fish long-term meaning all their time in the aquarium, also I read this article that he told me to read.

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/ca/volume_4/V4I4/hyposalinity/OST.htm


Statement: However, hobbyists should be aware that the long-term effects of hyposalinity are still unknown and poorly understood, and that it is not intended or recommended for long-term use in normal applications. The proper use of OST is to maintain the hyposalinity throughout the quarantine period for new arrivals, or the treatment period (i.e., 30-45 days) needed to clear up an outbreak of parasites, and then to very gradually return the salinity to normal levels
 
1.017 or 18 is not what I would call hyposalinity and I'd like to see a bit more solid material on it being long term unhealthy, If you do choose to run at that level keep an eye on alk/pH - one of the reasons old skool salts came with sky high alk at 35ppt.

You can acclimate fish down in salinity very quickly. For sick fish the reduced osmotic stress can be a stress relief
 
infinityends said:
Hypo salinity was only mentioned because I was reading about the process of acclimating fish to a lower salinity. Guess I didn't make that clear. But I'm not intending to run the tank at hyposalinity.

As far as the 1.017. I'll bump up the salinity. It has been a while since I have ran a fish only tank. And not sure why that number was in my head. Which also makes the salinity swing a lesser issue and kind of negates the need for this post.

I'll just give them a nice long drip acclimation.
Click to expand...

To answer the question, you could go from 1.026 to 1.017 in one day. Fish adjust much better to lower salinities as opposed to higher. Fish process O2 from the water more efficiently at 1.017 too. Online fish all need to be QTed for a minimum of 8 weeks, 10 is better. TTM and PP are also highly recommended.
 
wayne in norway said:
1.017 or 18 is not what I would call hyposalinity and I'd like to see a bit more solid material on it being long term unhealthy, If you do choose to run at that level keep an eye on alk/pH - one of the reasons old skool salts came with sky high alk at 35ppt.
Click to expand...

I agree that 1.009/10 long term is not desirable. I do not agree that 1.017/18 will have the same undesirable effects.
 
scooter31707 said:
Understood, but the OP mentioned hyposalinity
Click to expand...

I'm not sure he did really at least in the same context. He mentioned that they intended to move some fish from one tank to another where the salinity is different and asked whether they needed to follow the advice they'd read for salinity dropping when running hypo, and not that it was their intended level. At least that's how I read it.
I haven't read the links yet but will do so thanks for putting them up.

As mentioned above though it is my understanding that going down is fairly easy for fish to deal with but going back up is harder.
 
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