The Drip Acclimation Method (Suggested for Fish Transfer.)

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FishCrazyBenBOMB

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Hey AA members, it's Ben again.

I haven't really seen much on this thread about the Drip Acclimation Method for transfer fish into a new aquarium, so I thought I would put up a thread explaining it. This is just a guide, you can tweak with it all you want. I'm posting this to help others with the process. You don't have to post any more replies on here, but if you really want to you can. Like I said before it's a guide. LET'S GET STARTED!

Equipment Needed:
-5 Gallon Bucket. (Should be brand new, if not make sure it was never used for any chemical solutions.)
-Airline Tubing.
-Airline Tubing Control Valve.
-Airline Tubing Suction Cups.
-Fish Net

The Process:

Place the bucket next to or under the aquarium, so the water can siphon out. Buckets are fairly cheap, 5 gallon bucket should be $5-$6USD. You can also use a small tank, but remember the water getting put into the bucket will be dumbed. It's kind of like doing a water change.

Do not float your fish, just dumb the water and the fish into the bucket. I suggest keeping the bag, just incase they do die for some reason and you have a guarantee, you have to return the fish with some of your water, in the bag you got, and the fish.

Now get one of the suction cups and secure one end of the line inside the aquarium, if you don't get it low enough it could stop the process. Now cut the tubing to the length you wish so the end of the tubing is at the end of the bucket.

After this has been done you can now secure the end of the tubing in the bucket to the side with your other suction cup.

Now you can cut towards the center of the tubing, doesn't really matter where I just like the center because it is easily accessable. Place your control valve in the center of these two tubing lines.

Start the siphoning now, I normally just suck on the end quick to get it started. It's the easist way to me. Once the siphoning gets going, you can control how much goes through with your control valve. You want to aim for 1-3 drops per secound. The size of the tank with determine the amount of water that is dripped into the bucket for the fish.

For a 10 gallon tank, you'll want to drip around 2-3 gallons or 20% of the water from your tank into the bucket. For a 20 Gallon tank you'll want to drip the full 5 gallons. Pretty much just make sure you get about 20%, since this will also count as a water change aswell.

This may take a few hours for larger tanks, or under an hour for smaller ones. After you get the water all dripped and finished, take the tubing out. Then before you net the fish, fill your tank back up with the new water to top off the tank, then you may net your fish and move them into the tank.

Doing this method is strongly suggested. It will get your fish acclimated to your water parameters and temp. better and safer. This will increase chance of survival of fish during the transfer, and decrease the chance of fish getting stressed and causing death.


If you have any questions feel free to private message me.


Enjoy and happy acclimating.
 
I started using a simpler method about 6 months ago and have hardly lost any new fish at all since then.

I open the bag and float it for about 15 min. Then using a turkey baster I suck some water out and dump it. Then I fill the baster with tank water and put that in the bag. I repeat this every 5 - 10 min for and hour or more. Finally I net the fish by dumping the bag into a container with the net on top and carefully place the fish in the tank.

But I've only done this on fish from LFS so it may not be as good for shipped fish.
 
I do similar Sump only usually it's about a cup at a time. No fish loss's yet. There are many ways to acclimate, just depends on what you prefer. :)
 
Yeah, so many people do it different ways, I just prefer this way since it's just a very slow but benefical process. No quick anything, just lets them have time to get use to everything.
 
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