question of the day

[Carlene]

If you were to buy a fish from your lfs and the water perimeters are different than yours (such as your ph level) why does it only take only 20 to 30 min. to acclimate them into your tank where as if you want to raise the ph level into your tank it takes a week or more? So as not to shock them. This may sound stupid,but it was something I was thinking about. Any ideas?? The reason I am asking this is because I am having a ph problem as some of you may know from my other threads. Yesterday, I tested my water in my 29 gal. main tank and all of my levels were good except for my ph 6.0 and my water is soft. I also tested my quarenteen tank and all of my levels were perfect with a 6.8 ph level ( this is a 6 gal. tank). I change out 50% with a tap water of 7.2 everyday. With my main tank I have been changing out 4 gal. in the morning and night,with no change in my ph reading for about a week. So this morning I decided to change out 8 gal. of water and put back in 4 and my ph reading went up to 6.2 I will continually moniter to see what happens. I also have 2 tbl. of coral in the filter and my water level is 2 1/2 below the required water line so the water can be aggitated with more oxygen. What are your thoughts??

 

[Fish Eat Fish]

because its healthier for the fish for the PH to slowly change over weeks than in under an hour...BUT its more unhealthy to keep a fish acclimating in an unfiltered container for several weeks than to just plop it into a water of a different PH.

Its simply a lesser of two evils issue

 

[M|L]

there's much more science into water chemistry than you think.

pH is just ONE of many different properties that exists in water that affects your fish and it's acclimation to new environments.

ideally, any pH change should be avoided. but if it must occur, then you'd do it slowly.

but as for acclimation, it's really not practical to buy a new fish, setup a tank that's exactly like that of your fish store and convert it slowly to that of your tanks. so, common sense tells you that you'd just have to do the next best thing, which is to drip approximately an hour or so.

to be honest, I worked at a fish store when I was back in high school, and we bring in a truck load of fish twice a week. we don't even drip the water for freshwater fishes, we simply float the bag for half an hour and dump the fish in.

and the fishes do great, even start feeding in less than a few minutes; in most cases.

 

[Fish Eat Fish]

there's much more science into water chemistry than you think.

pH is just ONE of many different properties that exists in water that affects your fish and it's acclimation to new environments.

ideally, any pH change should be avoided. but if it must occur, then you'd do it slowly.

but as for acclimation, it's really not practical to buy a new fish, setup a tank that's exactly like that of your fish store and convert it slowly to that of your tanks. so, common sense tells you that you'd just have to do the next best thing, which is to drip approximately an hour or so.

to be honest, I worked at a fish store when I was back in high school, and we bring in a truck load of fish twice a week. we don't even drip the water for freshwater fishes, we simply float the bag for half an hour and dump the fish in.

and the fishes do great, even start feeding in less than a few minutes; in most cases.

Diddo.

I think most people in this hobby just temp acclimate for fresh water fish.

 

[fishlover88]

yeah sadly enough ive tried to convince my family and friends to slowly acclimate numerous times. It took me a very long time to get my dad to not add the store water to the tank. Im now trying to slowly get him to drip his fish. But i do what i can. Luckily i got my gf started on good habits. She drips everytime. so until the fish stores start to recognize that floating the bag isnt the best for the fish. The people who buy the fish wont change their habits. And we all know how easy it is to get pet stores to change their habits (last time i was in petsmart there were still red belly pacus for sale)