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 QT the fish and put the coral and shrimp into the main all after acclimation.

QT 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 QT. 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 PH & 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!