Thoughts on NOT adding water from store to tank with new fish?

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Personally I think B above has been lucky but probably has an excellent LFS and a fab tank set up/maintenance regime.
I agree with PB, put fish from bag into a bucket and drop feed tank water until bucket quite full. I don't net, I hand catch, but the principle is the same.
I have added LFS water to my main tank and paid the price.
A better way, IMO, is to use a quarantine tank. Any ailment is picked up and can be tested selectively if necessary.
Strangely, since using a quarantine tank I have never bought and infected fish. But I still use it.


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Microorganisms are always present in declorinated water. I'm good with fish, and I just cut it open and pour them in. The point is to minimise stress to the fish, the water is irrelevant!!


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I actually was told by lfs employee not to add any water other than my own. I float the bag for half hour get a bucket and cover it with my largest net. Once the fish are in the net I easily submersed into my tank. I hold net half way down and let the fish find their way out. Maybe a shock to lack the water for those 2-3 seconds, but I used to add lfs water. Last time I did I had an ammonia spike. Extreme and lost about 10 fish in about 4 days.


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Your doing more harm by trying to net them out of a small bag than any 20oz of pet store water could do. Lolz. Pet store people don't know diddly, and I doubt the ammonia was from the tiny bit of store water.


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Many local fish stores use a pooled water filtration system where water from 20 to 100 individual aquariums are mixed together into a single giant sump filter. Fish stores do this so they don't need to change water tank by tank. Many fishes sold in pet stores are wild caught and can carry parasites or viruses that have never been identified by modern medicine. If you love your fish spend the extra time to drip acclimate it and net it out. The only time I use pet store water is if my quarantine tank has no other fish. Even then I use as little water as possible and dump out most of it in the sink after floating the bag. When it's time to move the fish to my community tank, I use drip acclimation and net the fish out.
 
Many local fish stores use a pooled water filtration system where water from 20 to 100 individual aquariums are mixed together into a single giant sump filter. Fish stores do this so they don't need to change water tank by tank. Many fishes sold in pet stores are wild caught and can carry parasites or viruses that have never been identified by modern medicine. If you love your fish spend the extra time to drip acclimate it and net it out. The only time I use pet store water is if my quarantine tank has no other fish. Even then I use as little water as possible and dump out most of it in the sink after floating the bag. When it's time to move the fish to my community tank, I use drip acclimation and net the fish out.

I don;t know that that "pooled water" is true in all areas of the country. I know here in FL, That's NOT the case in any freshwater store I frequent. Pooled would mean that it's coming from different sources being mixed together but in a centralized system ( as in most Big Box stores for example) the water isn't "pooled" it's all coming from the same source. The system is just divided into many compartments. So if there is a sick fish in compartment "A" it's contaminating fish in the rest of the entire system. I've repeatedly asked the store's that use a centralized system what they use to prevent this and was shocked to learn that some don;t do anything. I don't buy freshwater fish from a a centralized system like that. I have other choices. In the shops I worked in, we used UV sterilizers in the saltwater systems to prevent anything from getting through or separated systems for wild vs tank raised fish. The freshwater selections were too large to do that with and all tanks were separate. Yes, it was more work but yielded better results.

As for most fish in stores being wild caught, that is true for Saltwater fish but definitely not of Freshwater fish. If you go into just about any fish store that carries today's most common freshwater fish, they are far removed from their wild ancestry. But the issue was the water in the bag you get your fish from. Would you release it in your tank? Well, if the store's water had copper in it, would you add it to your shrimp tank? If the system's water was treated with an antibiotic, would you want to use that water and help create an antibiotic resistant strain of whatever? How would you know? So the answer to the question should be based on where they get the packing water from. From the tank?, not a good choice. From a separate dedicated packing water bucket?, maybe...it all depends on how long the fish has been in the bag and how much "poo" is in there. Better yet, don't use any of the water at all.

Hope this helps (y)
 
1) Open bag
2) float bag in aquarium
3) Add little bit of fresh tank water every 5 minutes for about 30 minutes
4) remove bag from aquarium
5) dump bag over net/5 gal bucket (do not dump whole bag into tank)
6) place net in aquarium and enjoy your new fish

Very simple


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Andy made a point it hadn't considered before - copper treatment in the LFS water. I do keep shrimp in my main tank and now have even more reason to keep LFS water away from my tank. I do know that both of my LFS use copper treatments in their tanks, they told me.


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I've only briefly read these but don't think plants have been mentioned. I like to QT plants for a day or so as well. My lfs may have fish swimming in with the plants so there is some small risk with the water.
 
Microorganisms are always present in declorinated water. I'm good with fish, and I just cut it open and pour them in. The point is to minimise stress to the fish, the water is irrelevant!!


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Noooooooooohoohooooool you my friend, are wrong. The water issue is not with ammonia or nitrates, but with ich, bacteria, or other harmful bacteria. You are either very lucky, or have a very good LFS. I would not want my ~200$ fish to die, because I didn't put in the 30 minutes to acclimate my fish.

-- Just dumping the fish in definitely stresses the fish too. It's body does not have time to adjust to the difference in temperature, nitrate levels, etc..
 
Microorganisms are always present in declorinated water. I'm good with fish, and I just cut it open and pour them in. The point is to minimise stress to the fish, the water is irrelevant!!
Putting aside the obvious issues with pouring the store water into the tank which I think Andy has more than adequately covered above, how does dumping the fish into your aquarium "minimize stress to the fish"? Unless your water is materially the same as the stores, dumping it in should be significantly more stressful than being netted.
 
get details before making assumptions.

Your doing more harm by trying to net them out of a small bag than any 20oz of pet store water could do. Lolz. Pet store people don't know diddly, and I doubt the ammonia was from the tiny bit of store water.


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matt, i dont net them out of the bag. i put the sealed bag in my aquarium and keep fish in bag, wait 20-30 min then i remove the bag and place a net over a bucket (right next to the aquarium) and when the fish comes out he/ she goes right into my tank.. If you say ammonia didnt come from the store i think without knowing the facts of what i bought and so on your way out of line saying its not possible.. if i tested the ammonia the day before and it was at 0 and then bought several fish, each bagged separate w/ ALLOT of water in each bag, i submersed probably 8 full bags that day.. so think what you may but i never ever had a problem with the perimeters until that purchase was made. so please if you can come up with a reasonable answer that makes sense id like to hear it because i would feel better knowing it was not from the store . i bought several fish from there and that was the last time. the time before when i looked the tanks looked horrifying. several dead fish, fish with a fuzzy coating on them, dead by filters, the list goes on. i waited 2 weeks thinking that would be enough time. even the store manager agreed when i asked to speak to her about how sick the tanks looked... most everything i have learned about fish keeping i have learned the hard way.. so please share with me how to make it so easy and more enjoyable.
 
Btw, is there really this many posts about putting bag water in your tank, like seriously,??? How could one even consider it?
 
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