That's not an insignificant point, I probably shouldn't have glossed over it.
Over time I've figured out that less is more, and it's easier to acclimate your water to their water before you even get the fish home. There really shouldn't be any impulse buys, if you see a fish you like go home, do research and have a plan for acclimation and housing that fish. Easier said than done, I'm as guilty of impulse buys as anyone but I'm getting better. But having a plan for each individual fish has really increased my success with all fish, especially angels.
Acclimation is critical, especially when small angelfish are involved. Less time spent in toxic water, less time in a stressful acclimation setting. Most of the time I temperature match and hand place the fish in the tank because I don't usually add fish to a tank at 1.009, I'll start quarantine at 1.020 adjust down later if it's necessary.
These were shipment fish so the goal there is to get them out of that water as soon as possible, but you can't just dump the fish into a tank with a SG swing that large. Actually you probably could and everything would be fine, but I wouldn't want to chance that.
I pre-mixed a five gallon bucket to 1.020 with a few small pieces of live rock and left a powerhead in to circulate. Floated the sealed bags for a few minutes to temperature acclimate, then cut the bags and hand transferred the fish to the bucket. This works well for shipment fish because an adjustment to 1.020 is almost always on the way down but isn't a huge shock to the system. I covered the bucket and left them there for about a half hour to adjust to that change, then discarded half the water in the bucket and began to drip down to hyposalinity. That took a couple of hours and was a good excuse to perform a water change.
Both dwarfs were behaving normally after about an hour in the tank, picking rock and darting around. The flame ate a ton of mysis, the potters was skeptical as it picked the rock. Potters eating Formula 2 flake like crazy on day two which is noteworthy.
Somehow the Regal is able to distinguish between NLS pellets and Hikari pellets and is only eating Hikari now, but I'm glad to be getting calories in the fish however I can get them. Was picking at the mussels before but is now eating the whole thing, I came home to a bare broken shell tonight. Eating more and more every day, but still won't even sample frozen. Neither will my Indo Pacific Regal. I don't get it. Grey belly was eating pellets after six days, yellow belly after five...but no frozen.
But I'll take two pellet eating Regals any day.
