DO NOT acclimate UNLESS you have salinity mismatch.

I'd be sticking my neck out, but it's my suspicion that the leading cause of early death in our hobby is acclimation mistakes, as in too long, and without the simple procedure of setting up the qt as a 'receiving tank.' You then adjust the salinity to match your dt over the next 4 weeks of observation, and the fish is never, ever stressed.

People often don't recognize what happened because exposure to ammonia on day one can cause a fish who's been in the tank two days to suddenly stop eating, then fail, and die...the owner suspects every disease in the book, when the simple truth was the kidneys were so badly damaged by ammonia on day one that toxic stuff could not leave the bloodstream, and the animal dies after a few days of 'mysterious causes.'



Thanks sk8r glad you made this point and I think qt tanks that are hastily setup needlessly kill a lot of livestock. Sure I'll get flamed for that remark.
 
Check the water before taking a vendors word. Last time I purchased anything from an Lfs was peppermints and emerald crabs. I asked the employee to test the salinity before I left. He rustled up a dirty hydrometer and checked it and got 1.025. I got home and rechecked with my clean, well taken care of, freshly calibrated VeeGee refractometer and discovered their water was in fact 1.030. Their bad

1 hour acclimation down to my 1.026. I clip the open bags onto the side of the sump so they are temp acclimated, and every 10 minutes pull out two turkey basters of water, and add two in of tank water until they match. Works like a charm.

I rarely even temp acclimate coral. Bayer dip and a rinse for sps, iodine dip for zoas and Lps and right in they go.
 
Going Backwards

Going Backwards

Have been reading for hours and cannot resolve the contradiction between what LFS say about salinity (mine insists lower salinity reduces infection) and the experts who basically say this is not true. I run my tank at 35ppt and just bought fish today in a bag I tested at 31-32ppt. I do not yet have a QT but realise I must build one although I have serious space limitations. So after trying self help with reading lots of threads on this I am left with two loosely related questions

1. How do you set up a basic QT, what does it need.

2. What the heck is the deal with LFS running this low salinity thing..? If Randy Holmes Farley and Ron Shimek and others say they are mistaken then I reckon they are mistaken..? I dont really believe the salt savings would be sufficient to drive it....so why do LFS believe this and give us running 35ppt these acclimation problems.

Signed: Confused & a little annoyed
 
What the heck is the deal with LFS running this low salinity thing..? If Randy Holmes Farley and Ron Shimek and others say they are mistaken then I reckon they are mistaken..? I dont really believe the salt savings would be sufficient to drive it....so why do LFS believe this and give us running 35ppt these acclimation problems.

Signed: Confused & a little annoyed

I think you will find in this hobby, and in others, that there are lots of perpetuated myths that have no basis in fact. I'm hardly a chemistry or disease pathology expert and, who knows, lower salinity may actually help on some level, but the reason most LFS run at lower than full-strength seawater levels is twofold (from a buddy of mine who runs a LFS). First, across many display tanks, the savings in salt IS considerable. Second, since all of the wholesalers/distributors are shipping fish in at 1.015 - 1.020 it is just easier for him to keep his fish system at about 1.017 to ease acclimation (just as is outlined in this thread).
 
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