Can you over acclimate a fish?

[robert]

Hi richardb -

I can see where your coming from with regard to temp, ph salinity swings etc. but more often than not the water in the bag is cold, the o2 is low and the animal is floating in waste. There is a trade off in extending the exposure to the sub-optimal environment in the shipping/transport container with the "stress" of rapid change.

I think people tend to forget that the animal (coral/fish) did not live in the bag water - that the bag water is a transient, stressful environment. The bag is the transient stress. By extended acclimation you are in all likelihood compounding the damage caused by the transient state.

For example, I've shipped and received a fair number of corals. Many arrive cold. I've found its not so much how cold they get but rather how long they stayed cold which has the greatest impact on survival. In my experience short transients are not as deadly as extended transients.

 

[JSemour]

Robert, your post reminded me of one reason people typically have such differing acclimation procedures. It all depends on where you are getting your livestock from. People buying from a lfs, especially if the lfs keeps their salinity low, are likely to acclimate for longer. Even with lengthy acclimations, they are out of aquaria for a short amounts of time(hours). Then you have people who buy online or direct. These shipments are in transit for 12-36 hours, maybe even 48. In these situations, it's much more imparitive to get the animal in clean, stable water. In this case, slow acclimation of many species could actually do more harm than good.

When it comes to corals, I rarely acclimate to anything other than temperature.

Although I'm a big supporter or shorter acclimation times, obviously certain animals, like crustaceans, mollusks, and gastropods, need to be acclimated slowly. I still would not recommend anything too drastic, an hour at the very most.

 

[Borg]

I've stop doing the drip acclimation method. I found I had more fish deaths.
I dripped a achilles tang for 3 hours, and it died that same day.

I've been popping and dropping lately with no deaths. I float the bag for 30-45minutes. cut open bag and net the fish. I then drop into acclimation box. This month I've pop and dropped a moorish idol, gold flake angel and achilles tang. So far so good.

no more mixing extra water. No more deaths.

 

[Jacked Reefer]

It is possible there was some bullying that I did not see, but I do have my qt tank set up across from the couch on the other side of the room. Which allows me to be able to observe eveyone quite often while I am home. Things seemed fine before everyone took their places for sleeping at night. All I can think is that it was either the way that I acclimated the fish or that it was already in a weakened state. I think one of the things that really bothers me was the attitude of the manager. They are the only place locally that sells sw fish the next closest places are about 30 to 40 miles away. I would think that to try to keep local business that they would be willing to keep a customer happy especially when they say that it sounds like you did everything right also :noidea:

That is a good point Loki about the temp.

I work at a fish store and if we refunded every 3 dollar Chromis that died the costs would eventually add up to be insane. The Chromis tend to come with disease due to bad breeding techniques and such. I know it seems like the manager was being trashy but think about it from an operating standpoint. They don’t get the same wholesale prices as giant websites, they need to pay for labor and cannot Medicare all tanks die to certain fish being sensitive. Add the fact that we sell Chromis for three bucks and it makes sense