Acclimate shipped fish

Hello all. I have ordered two fish online, and they should be arriving to me on Friday. They're goldfish if this makes a difference. They're also a little expensive so I want to make sure I do everything right because it would be a lot of money down the drain if I kill them! They are coming from HawaiI to Texas by two day shipping.

So I have heard conflicting opinons on how to add shipped fish to their QT. Some say that the shipping bag is so horrible with ammonia by the time they get there, and when you open the bag and expose it to air the pH changes which makes the ammonia worse, so it's best to not open the bag until they are temperature matched, and then when you open it get them into their new water as soon as possible. This school of thought suggests that the pH in the bag will likely be lower than your tank pH and it's okay for fish to experience a quick rise in pH but not a drop, and that the difference is better than them sitting in ammonia-y water for any length of time.

The other school of thought is to add a drop of Prime to the water as soon as you open the bag, and do the usual slow acclimation adding tank water to the shipping water slowly. However, the first school of thoughters (lol) will say that the ammonia can be too high for Prime to do much good (like 8ppm) and you would take all the oxygen out of the water if you added enough Prime to neutralize it all.

So which is right? What should I do when I get these fish on Friday?

 

I've always just set up new fish and inverts on a drip acclimation.

I take out all the water, except how ever much leaves the fish comfortable swimming space, and drip them to the tank they'll be going in. Usually, since I deal with a PetSmart cup for my drip acclimation, I take out water from the cup as it gets full, and let it fill 2 times.

 

Forgot to add that the fish will be fasted for two days before shipping.

 

Its best not to have fish deal with any pH shock. Rise or drop. Severe swings are bad.

I would just do as AkarI said if you have air line tubing. But I would first float the bag in your tank for 15-20 minutes to allow the temperature in the bag to become equal to the temperature in the tank. Then do drip acclimation.

The second way is what I do. I still float the bag for 15-20 minutes. After that, I add about 1/8th cup of tank water into the bag. I repeat every 10-15 minutes for 2-3 hours. I increase the amount of water I pour in every hour every hour or so. This is a long drawn out process but your fish will thank you.

Good luck!

 

Here is how I do drip acclimation which I think would work wonderfully with your new fish. I set up a bucket so that it is tipped slightly on one edge. I dump the new fish in the bucket with only about half of their water. I then start a small air stone running in the bucket before I start up my drip line. I set the drip line slow enough that it is only going to double the amount of water in the bucket over a half hour to an hour. Once the water has doubled I remove half of the water than then let it double again (you might even want to do this 3 or 4 times due to the shipping and nasty water. There is really no need to float the bag in the tank because you are not going to raise or lower the water temperature that fast. It will actually take longer to match up the temperatures doing a drip acclimation than floating will so there is no worry about temperature shock.

If you feel that the ammonia level is too high in the water they arrived in you can double dose that water with Prime to help detoxify some of it but like you said it will not be able to detoxify it all but the drip acclimation will help.

 

Drip acclimation or the in-bag method girlsbeforefish suggests both work well.
If using the in-bag method, remember to keep the lights off. The bag and lack of water flow can cause a temperature spike in the bag if you have the lights on. Lights off will also cause most fish to be less active, so your new fish won't be running into the walls of the bag trying to escape.

 

So I have heard conflicting opinons on how to add shipped fish to their QT. Some say that the shipping bag is so horrible with ammonia by the time they get there, and when you open the bag and expose it to air the pH changes which makes the ammonia worse, so it's best to not open the bag until they are temperature matched, and then when you open it get them into their new water as soon as possible. This school of thought suggests that the pH in the bag will likely be lower than your tank pH and it's okay for fish to experience a quick rise in pH but not a drop, and that the difference is better than them sitting in ammonia-y water for any length of time.

This. This is what I do with Discus. And your fish are being 2 day shipped? I'd definitely do this. Many call it drop and plop. Float to get temp, then get the fish in the new water as soon as you open the bag. They aren't going to instantly die once the open bag is exposed to new air...but the theory is definitely true. CO2 and Ammonia build up in the bag at a low pH (pH will drop some in the bag), and once the CO2 off gasses and the pH rises (you putting in higher pH water by dripping it) the ammonia will become more and more toxic and cause burns.

Dripping after 2 days in a bag would be a very bad idea IMO. Even after fasting, 2 days the water will equate to sewer water. Adding your water to bag water will cause ammonia burns and raise toxicity because your pH is higher then the bag pH. The only times you should be drip acclimating is if you get fish from the LFS (very short bag trip) or if your tank pH is lower then the bag pH. Definitely drop and plop. Float for temperature (short time also because this still will cause ammonia to become toxic with a temp increase) and then plop them in the tank. I've done this with DOZENS of discus, both wild and domestic, as well as geos, festivums, and wild angels. I will never drip acclimate unless my tank pH is lower then the bag.

It honestly scares me how many people are recommending drip acclimation after such a long trip. Ammonia is much less toxic at a low pH, so adding your water and raising the pH should be common sense that the ammonia will become even more toxic as the pH rises and the temp rises.

 

Thank you, Slug. I know dripping is the best way to acclimate when they've had a short trip, but it kind of scares me too to do it with such a long trip and leave them in that gross water for so long. Knowing you do this with discus which are WAY more sensitive than goldfish makes me feel okay about doing that. My tank pH is 7.6 so I highly doubt it will be higher in the bag.

 

I recommend the drip method for shipped fish for the same reason I recommend doing slow small water changes when a fish has been living in as some call it sewer water for a long period of time. Normally large sudden changes in the waters parameters whether it is from low pH to high pH or from high nitrate to low nitrate water can be extremely stressful on fish.

This post caused me to do some phone investigation with a few friends I know that own their own local fish stores. I got a couple of different answers from them on what they do. One says he has twenty gallon quarantine tanks filled ¾ full of pre-treated water that he simply dumps his fish into, water and all. He then does a 50% water change within the first two hours of the fish being put into the tank and then another one 24 hours later.

Another one of the owners says he dumps as many of the fish out of the bag as he can while transferring as little of the water as he can into the new tank. He then nets the rest of the fish out and puts them straight into the tank. He leaves them in the back room with the lights low and don’t feed them for 24 hours. After 24 hours he does a large water change every other day until the quarantine period is over.

They both said that doing a drip method would also work but they would shorten up the normal drip time so that the water is doubled over a 10 minute period and would repeat this several times over the first hour to two hours.