acidpope

This is something I came across awhile ago, but I'm now just getting around to talking about it. I was commenting on a video on youtube and the conversation was about acclimation of FW fish. Someone had commented on drip being a non factor to acclimation and having no benefit from floating the bag. When I tried to sound all smart and explain the premise behind drip being the best way, he busted out an arguement I had never ever heard about. Osmotic Pressure. He argued that because of the way Osmotic Pressure worked that adjustments to a different pH took days to take effect, which would mean the few hours you took to drip the new fish, instead of floating, basically did nothing in terms of acclimating your new fish as far as pH was concerned. This was only the arguement for FW acclimation though. They said because of the way salt water works that drip was still the best method for inhabitants of a SW tank.

So my question is this. Has anyone ever heard about this? Is drip acclimating FW fish really not doing anything to prep your fish for a pH change? I looked it up, and it seemed that he was right from what I read about Osmotic Pressure, but I don't know if I was just being dazzled by science stuff.

Tony G.

IMHO it is THE way to acclimate the fish correctly..

Butterfly

As you add more and more water from the tank their going into the water will eventually be the same as the tank their going into. It also slowly acclimates them to other parameters in your water like Nitrates and temperature.
although it's a good method I don't drip acclimate. what i do is pour out all but about one cup of the water in the bag then every thirty minutes I add 1/2 cup of water from the tank their going into. Depending on the type of fish I do this from an hour to several hours. When I get ready to add them to the tank I net them out, add them to the tank and dispose of the acclimation water.
Carol

aquarist48

Sometimes we have to do things that gives us peace of mind as well as what is best for our fish. I use the drip method and I do it Carol's way also. It's worked for all of these years so I will continue to do so. Thanks for bringing up the osmotic pressure information. Something to look into.
Ken

Angela_96

The ph of every living organism is part of a "life balance" and when you change the ph to fast (.5 in less than 30 min) it will have unwanted effects.
Its just like when stuff happens to our body i.e. when someone stops breathing their co2 goes way up and it is acidic so it brings their ph down. With us our bicarb will buffer the acid but it takes TIME to adjust. In turn if something happens to the bicarb (metabolic system in our bodies) then a person will either slow their breathing down or hypervenilate to get a normal ph. But it takes time, and will a huge change that fast thats when people are going into the hospital needing to be put on a ventilator for breathing support, treated for metabolic conditions, etc. Our body is made to adjust to the ph and keep it at a "safe" level for life.
Just as any other living organism out there.
The fish need that time to adjust to the different ph.

acidpope

I've done both drip and float. My record has been no losses with drip, some with pouring water using a cup into the bag then using net over bucket, 25% loss with floating then netting over a bucket and no losses with purely floating. One thing to point out though was all my losses came when I poured the fish from the bag into a net sitting over one of my buckets and then put them into my tank. I don't do that anymore.

I agree completely with aquarist that whatever makes you feel best. Even if he (youtube guy) was right about the Osmotic Pressure, drip wouldn't hurt the fish (unless the bag was closed for a long period of time like mail order and the bag water goes to heck when the outside air enters the bag and changes the water chem and it's get the fish out or watch them die).

Upon further checking, I found the term the guy used. Osmoregulation. After reading up on it, it would seem stress is a major factor in acclimation, and might explain some, or all, of my losses. Apparently when the fish is stressed it loses some of it's ability to osmoregulate. So when I floated the fish in the tank or used drip and released them, they were most likely less stressed because they were in a more natural state (from water and being surrounded by water to water with a brief move from bag or bucket to tank), and when I poured them into the net over bucket which greatly increased the stress and inhibited their ability to properly osmoregulate.

ZomZom

I've been drip acclimating but would still like to see a large-scale study on the best way to acclimate fish. Theories and anectodal evidence are interesting but what we really need is a large amount of quality data, and I haven't seen that yet.

wooza

I used the floating method for all of my colwater fish and it worked fine. But I did experience a number of fatalities when using the float method with tropical fish. I now use the drip method and to date I havn't had a single loss.

sirdarksol

Yes, your friend is right that the osmotic stress will take days, rather than minutes or hours to get over, but it has little to do with pH (osmotic stress is all about mineral vs water concentration). Further, it's not the only thing we're worrying about with fish. We're worrying about things like specific concentrations of trace minerals, dissolved oxygen vs CO2, temperature, etc...

Let's look at ourselves for an example. Humans can easily survive in 60 degree air or 100 degree air (at least if they're properly dressed). You ever gone from 60 to 100 with no warning at all? I have, and I nearly passed out.
I haven't gone from high concentration of oxygen to low really quickly, but I know that people are supposed to do it slowly to give their systems a chance to adjust functions to make up for it.
Same with CO2. It's not a good idea to suddenly have a higher concentration of CO2 in the air (ever taken a breath from a freshly opened soda? It's an interesting thing to experience, and it only took two times to learn not to do it anymore)

Now, let's consider what would happen if we got hit with all three things at once, and add a few other extreme changes at the same time. I think that most people would get dizzy at the very least, and a number of people would likely pass out. Then let's consider what would happen if a sick person were to experience it (remember that fish are usually not in the greatest shape when they come from the pet store). It's very possible that such a person would die or at least get worse.
In my opinion, it's much better to remove as many sources of stress as possible, leaving the fish only to deal with new family members and the osmotic stress. This gives the fish a much better chance of survival.

I do the method that Butterfly said; float the bag and slowly change out the water until the fish is swimming in mostly water from their new home. This allows me to keep the bag at the right temp as I make the adjustments. It's important to not have the lights on when doing this, or the temp in the bag could skyrocket.