AQUARIUM ACCLIMATION GUIDES

First and Foremost, if you want to save a lot of broken hearts... Quarantine!

Benefits
1. It’s proactive rather than reactive. Rather than treating fish once you see a problem you can eliminate almost all problems before they occur
2. It allows you to keep your fish in a high water quality, low stress environment while they are making the critical acclimation to captive life.
3. It allows you observe health and feeding habits with very few variables, which means better treatment and care of the fish long term
4. If a fish is getting picked on, gets an infection, develops fungus, or for any reason needs to be medicated it allows you to treat the fish in isolation.
5. In case of an emergency, the backup tank is there ready and waiting. There need be no panicked trips to the pet store.
6. It is extremely cheap. A good quarantine system can be as simple as a heater, a sponge filter, and a 10 gallon tank.
7. Quarantine systems are safely and easily kept in out of the way places like a garage or closet.
8. Quarantine systems do not need to be cycled or maintained when not in use. A fresh quarantine can and should be made with each use at no detriment to the fish.

Freshwater Fish Acclimation Guide

Fish are a lot more fun when they're alive! That's why you should follow this acclimation guide to ensure they suffer minimal damage from the changing physical and chemical water attributes they go through from switching tanks.

1. Turn off the lights in the tank and leave them off throughout acclimation of the fish, at least an hour.

2. In order to equalize temperatures float the bag in the tank (it's a good idea to rinse off the bag with tap water and towel dry before putting in the tank).

3. After about 10 -15 minutes open the bag and either clip it to the side of the tank or roll the edges of the bag so that it floats in the tank without any water exchange.

4. Every 15-30 minutes add ¼ to ½ a cup of water from the tank into the bag. This helps to slowly equalize chemical conditions (pH, Alkalinity, etc.). The longer you make this process the better, if your bag fills up, dump some of the water from the bag into the sink to make room.

5. Now net your fish out of the bag (even better use a small plastic cup with a couple small holes acting as a strainer, this can be a little easier on fins than a net) and place in your tank. Its best to keep our water out of your water because you don't know what might be residing in our tank be it chemical or biological.

Following these simple steps could save the life of your fish and will definitely make it a happier camper.

For Saltwater Fish

Using tank-temperature, buffered, freshwater; every fish should be dipped for at 3-15 minutes. We call this “freshwater dipping” and every new fish being introduced to your should be freshwater dipped.

Marine fish are very adaptable to rapid drops in salinity, and can generally make that transition with very little stress. Parasites, such as the dreaded ich, cannot make that transition, and can be simply and easily eliminated through a dip.

For those of you unaccustomed to, or frankly nervous about putting your saltwater fish into freshwater – don’t be. This is a practice carried out by foremost marine and reef aquaria experts, wholesalers and pet stores. By the time that the fish reach your tank they will have likely already been through three separate dips, and should be completely free of troublesome pests.

Freshwater dipping is an extremely important procedure for keeping your fish healthy in the long run. If you haven’t been fresh water dipping your fish, and you still don’t have ich, consider yourself lucky. It only takes one tag-along hidden away in the gills of a new fish to literally wipe out your tank at worst, and at best have to pull all your fish out and quarantine them for 6-8 while the parasite lives out its life cycle in your display tank and eventually dies.

Depending on what your fish background is, you are probably accustomed to either floating or dripping your fish (or perhaps no acclimation at all). Both of these methods are commonly accepted practices, and deal with some measure of slowly adjusting the fish to the new environment conditions. Both these methods lack the preventative nature of a dip, which is vital to long term success. They deal more with negligible differences in water quality that will not affect the long term health of your fish or tank, which is why we use and recommend that every saltwater fish be dipped.

The most common signs of extreme stress are floating upside down (sideways is okay), and aerial attempts at escape (jumping out of the dip). If either of these things happen, make sure they get a closely guarded full three minutes of fresh water, and put them in the tank

Many fish will simply swim around the bucket, perhaps near the top breathing slightly harder than usual. Tangs, triggers and a score of other fish will typically go and lay down at the bottom of the container. This is okay, and not a sign of extreme stress.

To receive any guarantee on Critter Cabana fish, this procedure must be followed for all fish in the tank.

The “Freshwater Dip” Recipe

1. Float the fish bag in your tank.
2. Turn the lights off in the tank to reduce stress
3. Prepare a container of water somewhere between 1 and 5 gallons. Any sterile container will work – people commonly use Rubbermaid containers, 5 gallon buckets, anything of that nature.
4. Dechlorinate the water.
5. Heat the water. You can get a cheap radiant heater here for less than $10, or just use the one from your tank for a short time. You want the temperature of your tank, the fish bag, and the dip to match – probably somewhere around 78-80 F. Being off a couple degrees won’t hurt, but you want to be as close as possible.
6. Buffer the water to match the pH of your tank and our water. All three should be somewhere between 8.0 and 8.5. Synthetic sea salts, live rock and live sand will buffer the water naturally. If you find that your tank’s pH is lower than 8.0, fish should probably not be added a that time. You may need to do a water change, add more liverock or sand, or buffer the water using the same buffer you are using for your dip.
7. Add any treatments or medications you may want to use. Methyl blue is popular as an extra preventative against parasites, because it is quite effective and also very easy on the fish.
8. Wait at least a half hour or so for the water chemistry to balance out, and the water to heat up.
9. Net the fish out of the bag, or dump the bag out into your net over the sink. You never want to mix shipping water with dip water. (with the exception of minor amounts with fish that should not be exposed to air.)
10. Gently release the fish into the dip, and start the timer.
11. Dip the fish for a bare minimum of 3 minutes, and up to 15 if they seem to be responding well. The longer you leave them in, the more likely the hitch-hikers that may be on board are to die.

It’s simple! Using tank-temperature, de-chlorinated and buffered, freshwater; fish should be dipped for 3-15 minutes.

Additional recommended precautions and stress reducers:

1. Into large and well established tanks introduce more than one fish at a time. Fish are less likely to be singled out and picked on when they are not the only newcomer.
2. Feed your tank before you introduce any new livestock. This will curb their feeding response and help to eliminate excess aggression.
3. Rearrange the tank. If the tank is unfamiliar and unmarked territory to all the fish there is less likely to be aggression towards newcomers.
4. Regardless of any test results do a small water change to ensure that you water quality is pristine.
5. Leave the lights off until the next day.

Saltwater Inverterbrate Acclimation Guide

Proper acclimation is probably the best thing you can do to ensure long life and happiness for your fish, coral, or critter. Here is a general guideline to make this transition between our tank and your's as smooth as possible.

We recommend that fish be quarantined for two weeks separate from your main tank to make sure they are free of disease and in optimal health before entering your show system.

1. Turn off the lights in your aquarium for at least a few hours while your specimin adjusts to its new surroundings.

2. Put the inverterbrate with all the bag water in a bucket or container of sufficient size for the fish to be reasonably covered with the water.

3. Using some plastic air line tubing and a valve, set up and run a siphon drip line from the aquarium you will be placing the fish into, to the bucket. If you don't have a valve you can tie a not in the end of the tubing and tighten or loosen the not to adjust drip.

4. Start a siphon and slowly allow the tank water to drip into the bucket, using the air valve to adjust the drip rate. Keep the drip fairly slow. To fast a drip can change the water parameters to quickly and shock out your fish.

5. You are usually ready to go when the amount of water in the bucket is three times the volume of water that was there originally.

6. Now net your creature out of the bag (even better use a small plastic cup with a couple small holes acting as a strainer, this can be a little easier on fins than a net) and place in your tank. Its best to keep our water out of your water because you don't know what might be residing in our tank be it chemical or biological.

Note: For invertebrates like clams and starfish this acclimation process should be done VERY slowly, at least 4 hours as they are very sensitive to chemical changes in the water.