finally made myself a drip acclimator

So I was wondering how to make a drip acclimator (to add water from your tank into the new fish' bag gradually). Sorry if this is common knowledge, but I've finally got one working last night.

1/ float the open fish store bag in tank
2/ make a knot in an air hose (just the ones used for carrying air from airpumps to airstones)
3/ place a container full of water from the tank higher than the floating bag (I prop a book on the corner of my tank, but there's got to be a more stable way)
4/ syphon the water in the tube
5/ attach one end of the tube (with a clothes peg in my case) in the container
6/ attach the other end so that the drips will fall in the bag

Voila.

 

I've been using that for about a year or so now. It is best to use when you have very sensitive fish or if the pH is a big difference from the bag and your water.
Tom

 

drip drip drip

sounds cool.. got a pic to post of it LA? we're using the turkey baster method, although we've only had occasion to acclimate on the move here since we've not gotten new fish since may!

 

I would like to see this too.

I have been using the guppy acclimation method, which involves a big bowl about 1.5 hours of pouring water in and out.

 

what's the guppy acclimation method?

 

LOL...I found a method on a guppy site, that's why I call it that.

Honestly, you take the whole bag and put in a big bowl. Every 20 minutes you put in a half cup of water, until you reach the amount that was in the bag. Then, you remove half of the water in the bowl, and do it again. After doing for about an hour, they are in the water that they will be living in, and had a chance to get used to things.

 

ahh - cool - that's what I usually do with my not so sensitive fish - except I just put the whole bag in the water as opposed to using a bowl so the temp is equilibrated as well

 

Thanks for the AH HA moment guys... I think I know how I killed a couple of fish... I think I didn't acclimate them long enough.... :-( Poor fishes. Stupid Human.

 

yea, we float the bag in the tank, take some of it's water out, put the probes from digital thermometers in the tank and in the bag. Then we add a turkey baster full of tank water every 5-10 min or so until the digital thermometers are pretty close in temp.