fish in quarantine question

[Cassian]

hi, I have two wantanabei angelfish in a quarantine tank right now. I just got them in from Live aquaria today. two questions:
1. How should I bring them out of hyposalinty?
2. Being a deep water fish, will they need to adjust to brighter light? I would think they are already used to it coming out of live aquaria stock tanks.

also, that hypo salinity kinda scares me, ive always read it should be 1.018, but I tested the water and it was 1.014, which sounds dangerously low to me, but it is entirely possible I could be wrong. I matched the quarantine to that salinity, just wondering how fast I should bring it up

 

[saltyhog]

While that is a low salinity (usually LA ships around 1.017-1.018......make sure your refractometer is calibrated) it's not really what we call hyposalinity. When we use hyposalinity to treat for ich it's 1.009 and the fish tolerate it fine as long as it is achieved gradually.

When I get fish from LA I usually try to increase salinity about 0.001 per day if I'm actively increasing. I raise it by removing a couple of cup fulls of water and dissolve a few tablespoons of salt mix in it, add it back over an hour or so and repeat as needed to increase it by 0.001-0.002 per day.

Another option is to just top off with 1.026 rather than RO/DI. With the covers I use on my QT's I just don't get that much evaporation.

As far as the lighting, I did nothing to acclimate lighting on my watanabei. She did fine.

 

[Cassian]

While that is a low salinity (usually LA ships around 1.017-1.018......make sure your refractometer is calibrated) it's not really what we call hyposalinity. When we use hyposalinity to treat for ich it's 1.009 and the fish tolerate it fine as long as it is achieved gradually.

When I get fish from LA I usually try to increase salinity about 0.001 per day if I'm actively increasing. I raise it by removing a couple of cup fulls of water and dissolve a few tablespoons of salt mix in it, add it back over an hour or so and repeat as needed to increase it by 0.001-0.002 per day.

Another option is to just top off with 1.026 rather than RO/DI. With the covers I use on my QT's I just don't get that much evaporation.

As far as the lighting, I did nothing to acclimate lighting on my watanabei. She did fine.

thanks for your help and clearing that up about hypo!

 

[rkpetersen]

Also worth a mention -
Fish from LiveAquaria in SoCal do typically come in with SG of around 1.018.
But fish from the Diver's Den part of LiveAquaria, in Wisconsin, come in at full 1.026 salinity.
Which can be a hassle if you're getting boxes from both locations on the same day.

 

[saltyhog]

Also worth a mention -
Fish from LiveAquaria in SoCal do typically come in with SG of around 1.018.
But fish from the Diver's Den part of LiveAquaria, in Wisconsin, come in at full 1.026 salinity.
Which can be a hassle if you're getting boxes from both locations on the same day.

Very, true! How do you handle that?

 

[rkpetersen]

Very, true! How do you handle that?

Match the QT to the lower salinity level, then slowly acclimate the higher salinity fish down to the lower level.
Much less stressful for fish to drop salinity over an hour than raising it over the same time period.

 

[saltyhog]

Match the QT to the lower salinity level, then slowly acclimate the higher salinity fish down to the lower level.
Much less stressful for fish to drop salinity over an hour than raising it over the same time period.

That's pretty much what I do except I will usually set up the QT 0.001-0.002 higher than the LA (1.019 usually).

I've been diving where torrential rain had caused a big run off on a certain reef. The mixing fresh and saltwater would make the water so distorted to look through some people were getting a little nauseated but the fish were swimming around in it happily like nothing was wrong. Don't know what that salinity was but it had to be significantly less than the normal on that reef.