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All you need to know about Acclimation
- By marchmaxima .
- Published 01/5/2009
- General Articles
- Unrated
Floating Bag Method
This method is probably the most popular method of acclimation and the one you will hear fish shop staff telling customers to do. The method has a few variations, but most of them involve placing the closed bag into the tank enabling it to free-float on the top of the aquarium. The bag is left for between 15 and 30 minutes so that the water temperature in the bag equalizes to the water temperature of the tank.
Once the water temperatures are the same, open the top of the bag and follow this simple 5-step process:
1. Remove 20% of the water from the bag. (If it’s fresh water, put it on your roses. They will love you!).
2. Replace this water with the same amount of water from your destination tank.
3. Wait 15 minutes.
4. Repeat steps 1-3.
5. After 1 hour, gently net the fish and transfer them to the tank.
Some fish are more difficult to net than others. If you're having difficulty netting your fish, get a large bowl and sit the net on top. Slowly and carefully pour the bag water and fish into the net allowing the bowl to catch the water. Some people recommend performing this activity over a sink. If you choose to do this, learn from the mistakes of others and plug the drain.
This is a very popular and widely-recommended method probably due to its simplicity. One issue of concern regarding this method is the possibility of something undesirable on the outside of the bag getting into your tank. It is entirely possible that the fish shop employee used a hand-cream before handling the bags, the bags were stored on a floor, on a wet surface hence anything could have collected on them. The author specifically recalls one horrible moment when she witnessed a local fish shop owner spraying bug-killer right over the top of a pile of fish bags. Should such a bag with be floated in a tank, the consequences could be disastrous. While the risk of this occurring is considered low, it is still something to be mindful and why some will advise never to float a bag.
Important Note: Turn off your aquarium light while performing this method of acclimatisation. It will reduce fish stress levels.
The Bucket Method
This method is a variant of the floating bag method. Water from the destination tank is put into the bucket and the bag containing the fish is kept closed and allowed to free-float for between 15 and 30 minutes to allow the water temperature in the bag to equalize with the water temperature of the bucket water. The 5-step process described above then applies removing 20% of the bag water and replacing it with water from the destination tank.
The bucket method is better than the floating bag method because there is no risk of anything on the outside of the bag polluting the tank. The risk of bag water spilling into the tank is eliminated as is the possibility of anything on the outside of the bag being introduced to your tank.
The Drip Method
This method is the one used by most serious hobbyists and the one recommended above all others. The inhabitants acclimate to the new water conditions more slowly than other methods and, assuming the fish are relatively healthy when you receive them, the method ensures an extremely high success rate. The process involves using an inline tube to drip feed tank water into the bag. The water drips at a rate that both ensures temperature equality between the bag water and the tank and the difference between your water parameters and the shop's water parameters is reduced slowly enough so that stress to the fish is dramatically reduced.
The entire process can take anywhere from an hour to two hours, depending on your own preference.
The Drip Method – Step-by-step procedure
Items Needed:
Procedure:
1. Discard approximately 25% of the water from the bag. Sit the bag with your new fish into a container for support. Alternatively you may want to pour the contents of the bag into the container. This can reduce the risk of smaller fish getting caught in the collapsed corner of the bag, but you may need to take appropriate caution for fish that may jump. The container should be large enough to be able to hold the same amount of water you just discarded.
This method is probably the most popular method of acclimation and the one you will hear fish shop staff telling customers to do. The method has a few variations, but most of them involve placing the closed bag into the tank enabling it to free-float on the top of the aquarium. The bag is left for between 15 and 30 minutes so that the water temperature in the bag equalizes to the water temperature of the tank.
Once the water temperatures are the same, open the top of the bag and follow this simple 5-step process:
1. Remove 20% of the water from the bag. (If it’s fresh water, put it on your roses. They will love you!).
2. Replace this water with the same amount of water from your destination tank.
3. Wait 15 minutes.
4. Repeat steps 1-3.
5. After 1 hour, gently net the fish and transfer them to the tank.
Some fish are more difficult to net than others. If you're having difficulty netting your fish, get a large bowl and sit the net on top. Slowly and carefully pour the bag water and fish into the net allowing the bowl to catch the water. Some people recommend performing this activity over a sink. If you choose to do this, learn from the mistakes of others and plug the drain.
This is a very popular and widely-recommended method probably due to its simplicity. One issue of concern regarding this method is the possibility of something undesirable on the outside of the bag getting into your tank. It is entirely possible that the fish shop employee used a hand-cream before handling the bags, the bags were stored on a floor, on a wet surface hence anything could have collected on them. The author specifically recalls one horrible moment when she witnessed a local fish shop owner spraying bug-killer right over the top of a pile of fish bags. Should such a bag with be floated in a tank, the consequences could be disastrous. While the risk of this occurring is considered low, it is still something to be mindful and why some will advise never to float a bag.
Important Note: Turn off your aquarium light while performing this method of acclimatisation. It will reduce fish stress levels.
The Bucket Method
This method is a variant of the floating bag method. Water from the destination tank is put into the bucket and the bag containing the fish is kept closed and allowed to free-float for between 15 and 30 minutes to allow the water temperature in the bag to equalize with the water temperature of the bucket water. The 5-step process described above then applies removing 20% of the bag water and replacing it with water from the destination tank.
The bucket method is better than the floating bag method because there is no risk of anything on the outside of the bag polluting the tank. The risk of bag water spilling into the tank is eliminated as is the possibility of anything on the outside of the bag being introduced to your tank.
The Drip Method
This method is the one used by most serious hobbyists and the one recommended above all others. The inhabitants acclimate to the new water conditions more slowly than other methods and, assuming the fish are relatively healthy when you receive them, the method ensures an extremely high success rate. The process involves using an inline tube to drip feed tank water into the bag. The water drips at a rate that both ensures temperature equality between the bag water and the tank and the difference between your water parameters and the shop's water parameters is reduced slowly enough so that stress to the fish is dramatically reduced.
The entire process can take anywhere from an hour to two hours, depending on your own preference.
The Drip Method – Step-by-step procedure
Items Needed:
- A fish-only bucket
- A container or something to put your bag with fish into
- A length of tubing/air hose (I use something around a meter in length
- A control valve
- A clothesline peg, airline suction cup, or similar item to secure the tube to the side of the tank
Procedure:
1. Discard approximately 25% of the water from the bag. Sit the bag with your new fish into a container for support. Alternatively you may want to pour the contents of the bag into the container. This can reduce the risk of smaller fish getting caught in the collapsed corner of the bag, but you may need to take appropriate caution for fish that may jump. The container should be large enough to be able to hold the same amount of water you just discarded.
 |
Bag sitting inside container. Notice there is enough room in this container to allow more water to be added to the bag. |
2. Connect the control valve to one end of the plastic tube to create a drip hose.
 |
Plastic tube and control valve. |
3. Put the other end of the plastic tube (the end without the control valve) into the tank and secure the tube to the tank using the clothesline peg. Ensure that the end of the tube remains submerged.
| 4. Using a bucket to catch the water, start a siphon either by sucking on the control valve or if an additional short length of airline tubing is added to the other end of the control valve, use a children’s medicine syringe to start the siphon. |
| 5. Adjust the control valve to let the tank water drip into the bag. Note that there is no set rate for the dripping. It can be varied depending on the sensitivity of the fish. |
 |
Starting the siphon. |
 |
Adjust the control valve to set up a drip of approximately one drip per second. |