Food for thought!? Float and dunk?

[fareforce]

Before I get started with this I will say that I personally drip acclimate all of my fish, etc.

Float and dunk?

So, they say you shouldn't adjust the PH, salinity, etc more than 1 point per day. Do, if you do a 2 hours drip you are basically stressing your fish out for 2 hours, then letting them go in your tank to finish off the stress.

The other thing would be to float the bag for 10-15 mins to get to temp, and then release into your tank. This would stress then for a much shorter time. I know it would be more stress, but what is really better? More stress for less time, or less stress for a much longer amount of time?

Kinda makes you think, huh??? LOL

Of course you can't do this is your S/G is 1.026 and the LFS was 1.022, that would just be stupid..

Now of course this comes with caution. I dont reccomend that people do this, but just wanted to post my ramblings..


Now, lets start the comments on this one. How do you guys acclimate your fish, inverts, etc? And, what have you heard?

 

[Blown 346]

I acclimate my fish and inverts with the drip method.I have the room as dark as possible first, then I will open the bag that the fish, invert or corals are in, get a plastic tupperware container. I will place the fish etc in the container and ad all of its water to the bowl.
I then start a 3 to 4 drip per second for 2 hours. Once the bowl fills up I empty halfout and continue until the 2 hours is up. Once the time is up I net the fish and place into a dark tank, so the new comer wont be harrased as the other fish are resting.

I have heard that by only floating the fish will be under more stress since it is only adjustedto the temperature, not salinity, PH etc.
Bt doing the drip method the fish has the chance to slowly adapt to the new changes. I find this way the most un stressful and all of my livestock does great. I have even seen by doing this method that new fish will eat the very next day and take to the new envirnment alot less skiddish.

 

[fareforce]

Any one else every think of this?

 

[bertoni]

I don't think a slow change in SG is going to cause stress. The acclimation effort is down in the noise of osmotic regulation. Float and release will work if the SG isn't too different, but I don't know of any hard data on the damage levels for various scenarios.

 

[WaterKeeper]

I hardly ever float when I'm drunk but it sure beats sinking,

 

[Paintbug]

its kind of like hitting a brick wall. would you prefer to hit it at full speed or slowly run in to it.

 

[drunktank]

i dont have 4 hrs to acclimate a fish. I do it in 30min. 15mins floating the bag so the temp ajusts, then 2 dips over the next 15min. Then i take the fish out and throw away the water incase theres anything in it. There is a little shock depending on where i get the fish.

 

[fareforce]

I thought abut trying a study for this, but then again.. not with my fish!!

 

[Scuba Oz]

How would a study be done, you going to interview the fish after each method and get its opinion

 

[mystic7]

I temp acclimate for 15-20 minutes, then pour a cup of tank water into the bag every minute or so. When it's almost full I dump out most of the water, then add a cup per minute until it's almost full. Takes a total of about 20 minutes. Then I dump them into the tank. If none of the tankmates bothers the new arrival he's usually swimming calmly around the tank within a minute or so and eating by the next feeding time. And my SG is at 1.019 whereas the LFS is as high as 1.025 (if the fish is in a coral tank).