Arghh! LFS parameters way off !

[guitarfish]

Brought home a new coral beauty from the LFS tonight, and decided to run a full gamut of tests. Last week I brought a new fish home, did the usual 1 hour acclimation, and it was dead by morning, with no obvious reason.

My 20g established QT:
1.022 SG (refractometer)
ph - 8.2
Alk - 8.0dkH

So far so food.

LFS water
1.018 (get this - at the store they measured it with a swingarm, and announced 1.024 !!)
pH - 8.6
Alk - 16.0 dkH !!

The alk was done with a Salifert kit. I can understand pH being a little high, but their Alk is through the roof !!

I don't want to kill the fish, so I'm going to do a long drip acclimation. Any thoughts on how big a shock this is going to be? How do fish handle changes in Alk like this?

Thanks.

-Dave

 

[Freed]

Just another reason to never trust a LFS. Take your time with the acclimation. Drip a few drops per second or so for about an hour and it should be good to go. I always take my time and usually let it acclimate for a couple hours anyway.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

One way to deal with low LFS salinity is to set your QT tank to their salinity before you get the fish. Then over the next 2-3 weeks, slowly raise the QT tank salinity. I wouldn't worry too much about the alkalinity, since I don't think it will be a big problem for the fish, but a good acclimation is still desirable.

 

[guitarfish]

I floated the bag in the QT tank. I took a container of tank water, put it on top of the hood, and did a slow drip into the bag. I did this over 3.5 hours. Because the drip was slow and the bag was in the water, the temp remained constant. The bag water gradually came into equilibrium with the tank after repeated addition of new water and dumping of old.

The fish was calm throughout the entire process, and after I released him, he calmly explored the new surroundings and seemed at ease. Lights out an hour later.

This morning - deceased.

Thanks for the help anyway guys.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Sorry about the fish. He may have been pretty stressed to begin with.