From QT to main display=death

[varg1]

This happened to my buddy that works at my LFS, and i got a new lionfish, just acclimating him to the QT right now and i dont want this to happen to me. Anyway he had 2 clowns in QT at the fish store, he had them in there for a while because he was treating them for something i dont recall, but he was using hypo treatment and one other med. He had them in there for about a month then put just acclimated them with a rubber maid container, no drip method just put them in rubber maid and left them floating in the tank for about 30 min. When he realesd them after 5 min the littler one died and the bigger one short after. Now i thought it was because the Sg went from 1.010 to 1.026 and they had some sort of shock, or because the nitrites were at 1ppm, but he did use prime to detoxify the tank wich in the past has worked with clowns in one of my tanks. He has done this many times and never saw that happened, was he just lucky those other times? Or is there a different procedure for acclimating from hypo to regular sg? I used the drip method and it took about 1 hour and a half and my clowns are very heathy today. I know ppl will ask why he put the fish in before it was done cycling but its because it wasent done cycling and they were running out of room for fish and had to set up 5 more 55gal tanks.

 

[c0mp|ex]

when going from hypo(1.009) to reg sg(1.025) you need to gradually increase the specific gravity over a period of 6-7 days. a rise in specific gravity is very stressful on fish, even more so than a drop in specific gravity. That is probably why the clowns died, they went from 1.010 to 1.026 immediately.

 

[varg1]

Ok thats what i was told and thats what i told him and he said...hmm i was told different. Thanks

 

[Jerry W]

Complex is right. Fish can tolerate a quick reduction in salinity, but the return from hypo to display levels must be slow.