Best is to acclimate and quarantine even if quarantined already. Keep in mind, the purpose of quarantine allows the fish to de-stress and for you to have the fish adjust to your parameters, your food while providing it a safe place for it to thrive away from more aggressive and established tank mates who can out compete it for food. Putting a fish directly into your display puts the fish into more stress after being netted at store or from shipment and added stress events leads to the reason why we quarantine our fish.
A fish’s immune system should be able to fight off more infections and diseases, however the shock of transportation compromises your fish’s immune system leaving it vulnerable to any disease that gets shipped with it.
Im not a fan of drip acclimation and highly recommend:
Float bag for 20-30 minutes
Transfer fish and water into a clean bucket
Then . . . .
Measure the Ph, salinity and temperature of the bag water. then you can add a cup of tank water to bucket every 15 mins 6 times (almost 1.5 hours)
Then check salinity in bucket and compare to tank. If no match or very close, add a cup of water every few mins until you've reached salinity and trap fish in same cup and pour off water and release into display. Release under LOW light before lights out. I dont drip into bags because fish in shipped bags produce carbon dioxide and ammonia. The carbon dioxide lowers the pH of the water in the bag, That in turn makes the ammonia non-toxic to the fish. When you acclimate them, if not done just right, you drive off the carbon dioxide faster than you are diluting the ammonia. That raises the pH of the water in the bag, and that in turn, makes the residual ammonia very toxic to the fish. Sometimes, the fish will die right in the bag
I remember when 'safety stop' was the gold standard of fish husbandry! drop em in the green and blue koolaid - and done!
