Preparing to Acclimate

[Phyl]

I have a couple of fish, a tube coral and a pair of shrimp coming in on Friday. I'm going to [acronym:b930820aa9="quarantine or quart depending on context"]QT[/acronym:b930820aa9] the fish and put the coral and shrimp into the main all after acclimation.

[acronym:b930820aa9="quarantine or quart depending on context"]QT[/acronym:b930820aa9] will be a 15g tank with a 30g garbage can for a sump. The water will be 20g from my main and 15g of new aged (lol) saltwater.

This will be my first time using a drip acclimation. I'm trying to be as prepared as I can for the event. What I figure I'll need are 3 buckets. One for the fish, one for the coral and one for the shrimp. The shrimp and coral will feed from the main and the fish will feed from [acronym:b930820aa9="quarantine or quart depending on context"]QT[/acronym:b930820aa9]. In those buckets I'll need what? A piece of airline tubing, heater and ? anything else? About how long should the process take for each animal? I haven't lost anything to the shot-glass method So hopefully I'll maintain my track record with this better method.

Any words of wisdom before these guys get here?

[BDAWG]

The way I do it is...I let them sit in the bag in the tank so they can acclimate to temprature. Then I'll put them in a bucket and do the drip method allowing approx. 2-4 drops per second come out of the tube. I'll let them acclimate like that for about an hour to an hour and a half.

That's my method, it works for me. Does anyone do it differently?

[tripper]

That's the same way I do it as well. For inverts though, I usually drip a little slower and take the total acclimation time up to 2 hours. I only started this after losing a couple cleaner shrimp from poor acclimation.

tripper

[BDAWG]

Originally Posted by tripper

For inverts though, I usually drip a little slower and take the total acclimation time up to 2 hours.

That's a good idea, I'm going to do that next time.

[Phyl]

My last step in the acclimation process has always been to compare the water quality. If the tests don't mesh I keep going. I check the [acronym:a2338c5378="power head or Measure of the concentration of hydrogen ions, depending on context"]PH[/acronym:a2338c5378] & salinity. There's obviously lots of other stuff going on in the water. Any other biggies that would dramatically affect the various animals I'll be acclimating?

[quarryshark]

My last step in the acclimation process has always been to compare the water quality

This is the key. Also make sure them temp matches.
I agree with the above, drip the inverts slower than the fish.
Sounds like you have a good plan!