Well pretty urgent.....Long story short my shipment of pbass are arriving morning and unless it arrives before 7:20am then I won't be home. So I'm having my uncle receive the fish but he has no experience with acclimating fish. So wud it be okay if he brought the box in the house opened he box to check for DOA and then close it up till I arrive home around 3:00-3:30. If there are DOAs then there's more trouble but the vendor is very good so it's very unlikely. Or shud I risk it with him trying to acclimate them. He has some fish experience with oscars arles but not with real drip acclimation
Situation with fish being shippedB**Urgent**
- Thread starter troutking
- Start date
WROOOOOOOOOOOONG. DO NOT open the bags and then leave the fish in there for several hours. Guaranteed death; CO2 leaves solution, ph rises, ammonium converts into toxic ammonia, fish die. All around bad time.
In fact, I would recommend having your uncle pour the fish into nets and release them into their tanks. The situation described above is thought by some to be worse than any kind of damage caused by drip acclimation, and I tend to agree with them based on my own experience and what few anecdotes I've seen. Here's a thread I started a while back about this: http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=370895
Keep in mind I'm not amazingly experienced with this, I've only received one shipment, but based on a couple hours' research before receiving the shipment, I decided on netting the fish into their tank. No issues.
First i would have him check for DOAs and have him take pics if there are and send the pics to the vendor as soon as the fish are recieved or you might not get any kind of refund. Put the new fish in a bucket. run about a 6 ft air line from your tank to the bucket. Tie a very loose knot in the ariline so that you have a drop a sec. Then let it drip untill the fish wakes up from its sleep. I would advise you to put the fish in a quarantine tank for a couple of days to make sure that they dont have any desieses. I would also ass some aquarium salt and ick meds to the quarantine tank just to be on the safe side. If the fish are left in the water to long it can kill them especially if they are bigger fish.
all these posts seem kind of extravagant, I've had 6 shipments in the last 2 months and i was only home once to receive the fish. I had my sister open the bags and toss the fish in a tank i had set up for them. 6 times with zero fatalities. I think that is a pretty good ratio. best of luck whatever you decide to do though.
You have to decide if you want to do the "squirt and dump" method or acclimate them. There are valid arguements for both methods.
