I've read a few threads that mention osmotic shock, specifically with shrimp. Can someone point me to a scholarly article that would provide evidence of this? The change in osmotic pressure on a cell from between 500ppm and 200ppm is trivial. These values vs DI are about 0.02 kPa and 0.009 kPa respectively. That may seem large, but not when you compare it to the pressure from a cell, which is conservatively >40 kPa. The net change is <0.03%.
Seawater is about 1500 kPa and brackish is about 400 kPa. That is certainly large enough and there is plenty of documentation of osmotic shock there. But from 0.02 to 0.009? I'm skeptical, the change is too insignificant.
I am not meaning to start a forum war. I could be completely wrong.
There are other things that make it worth while. It is the best method of minimizing the introduction of pathogens into the tank (as opposed to just floating the bag and dumping it). Temperature and pH still need acclimation. But then I'm sure everyone uses a quarantine tank. :grin2:
I was told that i should stop drip acclimating my fish and just dip n drop, I don't get their theories on it because floating the bag just acclimates the temp unless you have very hot lights then the surface water is warmer than the tank temp, I'm actually going to get more fish today and curious if drip acclimating them is nessessary?
Here is the thing with drip acclimation. Depending how long the fish have been in the bag ammonia levels will increase due to fish waste produced. Along side of this Co2 levels increase due to fish respiration lowering the PH of the water. This is good and bad because as the PH drops more ammonia is converted to ammonium which is less toxic to fish... Yay right!!! Well not so much the case. As soon as you open the bag and start a drip acclimation the Co2 starts to off gas and that means the PH will start to rise rather quickly causing the ammonium to start converting back to the more toxic ammonia potentially killing or permanently damaging the fish. Generally the longer the fish has been in transport the more you will see this effect. So if your picking it up from the LFS and taking home a drip acclimation would probably be better but if you are having them shipped in or keeping them in the bag for longer periods of time then a drip acclimation could be deadly.
It's a 25 min drive home from my lfs, my lfs also quarantines the fish for 2 weeks prior to selling them, their tanks are also crystal clear and about the same ph as mine except in certain tanks like discus of course, I've done the floating and dropping them in but I've lost fish that way, I've also lost fish in the past with dripping them, I don't leave them in the bag when dripping them I have a Tupperware container I put them in and then net them into the tank not adding the water from the fish store to the tank, maybe im just overly cautious, would I be okay just to dip and drop?
Oh I don't keep discus it was just an example of a different tanks ph compared to mine, the fish im getting today are rainbows and peppermint tetras, and lemon tetras. 11 fish total so Im kinda dreading the dripping part as it will be 1-2 hours
I do 2 drops per second on the drip, I'm totally starting over with my knowledge as I was given bad advice before going to the lfs I go to now
Bags are cheap so ask them to do 2-3 fish a bag just tell them you have a long drive and want to make sure the fish make it. This will make for less ammonia on the trip and would allow you to rule out ammonia poisoning for the most part.
Okay I will drip them, should I keep doing it in my Tupperware container or is the bags fine, I like the Tupperware container because it's easier to net the fish out
Let me run this by you, I called aquarium adventure and they said that acclimating that many fish at one time is going to be very long and very stressful as I don't want to acclimate all the fish together as they said they do not drip in the bags at their store they use buckets (meaning I would be mixing rainbows, and 2 different species of tetras in one bucket) , so they said with that many fish they would recommend me float the bags for 15 min, open the bags let them float by using something to hold the bags to the tank and add some of my aquarium water every 15 min for an hour, I've never done it this way as I've never tried to acclimate different species of fish at the same time. Ugh I'm stressing out over here lol
Let me run this by you, I called aquarium adventure and they said that acclimating that many fish at one time is going to be very long and very stressful as I don't want to acclimate all the fish together as they said they do not drip in the bags at their store they use buckets, so they said with that many fish they would recommend me float the bags for 15 min, open the bags let them float by using something to hold the bags to the tank and add some of my aquarium water every 15 min for an hour, I've never done it this way as I've never tried to acclimate different species of fish at the same time. Ugh I'm stressing out over here lol
Yes I use that method often when dealing with hardier fish. Nothing wrong with it and its very standard and general practice. Its like a sped up version of drip acclimation that is fine when parameters are close and fish are hardy. Again I would not do this with fish that have been shipped or spent long periods in bags but it should be good for your case. Just make sure you do not dump the water from bags into the aquarium but rather pour it through your net into a bucket or your sink then add the fish to the aquarium from the net.
When I worked in the pet trade years ago (nevermind how many years!), fish wholesalers often dropped a little zeolite into the shipping bags with the fish--especially goldfish--to absorb ammonia, so if you're concerned with ammonia, you may want to do that. I personally don't think a drive of less than an hour is going to result in ammonia issues?, especially with fish not known to be particularly sensitive or fragile.
However, one thing to remember when doing drip acclimation is that the water in the bucket/container you're dripping into does not necessarily keep the same temperature as the aquarium you're dripping from, and after a nice, long water acclimation, you may in fact be netting the fish into a temperature shock situation. If I think there might be a chance of the acclimation bucket dropping in temperature, I place a heating pad beneath it and monitor the temp. (I suppose a small aquarium heater would serve as well or better, but I don't have a suitable one right now.)
Sometimes, when we give intense focus to technical aspects, we forget or overlook the most basic things, and when we adjust one thing it affects everything else, especially in this hobby.
Okay so I did float and drop but I did what I never done before dumping the fish into a net into a container and then putting them in the tank with the net, I did it as safe as I could by limiting the distance they fall into the net which is a very soft net, but now I'm worried that they got injured from me doing this, my nets wouldn't fit in the bag have any of you done it that way? I spent 110 dollars in fish today and hope I didn't hurt them.
I do this all the time and a long as you pour slowly there should be no issue. You poured the water through the net so the fish remained in the net and the bagged water was discarded right?
2 emerald rainbows, 2 bosemani rainbows, 2 red Iranian rainbows (mated), 3 peppermint tetras, 3 lemon tetras, 2 things of Hikari frozen blood worms $110, I don't know if that's expensive, but to me it's worth it because they are already quarantined
I have my lights off because of stress but I will take a video of them soon, how long should I leave the light off for as I have plants and I haven't had the light on on 14 hours... Should I leave it off for another 24 like I usually do?
Yes and I kept the net as close to the fish in the bag as possible but they rushed out like a stream, all seem to be doing good though, eating like Champs, not showing signs of stress, I poured the water through the net, fish stayed in the net I then put net into aquarium and released the fish and discarded the bagged water into the sink, just worried about how fast they came out of the bag into the net, I'll post a video soon I took a short one, just don't laugh at my scrawny plants and glass I cannot for the life of me get clean it's like stained or something lol
So I have to wait until the beginning of may in order to do some testing but I have decided to do a test using very low grade cherry shrimp and a TDS meter using Sodium Chloride at differing concentrations and my tank as a control to preform a very crude test to roughly gauge osmotic shock for cherry shrimp. This test will not be definitive and probably yield some questionable and marginal data but none the less I think it will be somewhat interesting and give some information. I realize this will be only specific to cherry shrimp and in particular the shrimp I keep and not necessarily be overly useful for the same species shrimp in others tanks but may still provide some basic understanding of what toxic levels are more generally. This will be looking more at the acute results than long term effects.
@p0tluck, I used to live right down the street from Bruce's pond shop.. Telegraph and Sibley Rd.. I did frequent Bruce's, they are very nice people. However I can tell you I have found some of their knowledge to be lacking. Obviously no one knows everything, and processes improve. I like Bruce's and don't want to knock them in anyway, but there are a couple excellent more niche market aquarium shops in MI..
As always though do your research and take salemens advice with a grain of salt.
They to me are amazing no other place around me worth the gas.
I'm agoraphobic so I can't go for super long drives, I've been to every fish store by me, tail fins (absolutely horrible), fish doctors (7 tanks had ich), Jan's ( permanently closed) I agree that people don't know everything but to me personally as we all like different things aquatic treasures is absolutely my #1 choice
If you ever make your way to Lansing, check out preuss pets. I was just down in Florida and visited segrest farms. The fresh water fish manager at segrest farms worked at preuss pets, and is still their representative. She was awesome on our tour and extremely knowledgeable. Preuss pets is a great place to visit if you ever make the trip.
Stingray bay is not to bad. They have some nice saltwater tanks. I've only been once. Also Moby Dick up near Waterford is another good stop.
Also as far as straight freshwater fish go, you might be able to make it to fantastic fins. It's not too far from you, it's not modern or pretty, but they breed alot of rare plecos and have alot of species.
My favorite place on the east side is Kee's aquarium.. it's still pretty far from you though.
Excellent point, my apologies to the OP. I had more of a purpose for posting but got off track 0
So I just drip acclimated some Blue dream Neocaridina last night actually for over an hour. They were in the bag at least three days. I am aware of the potential pitfalls of ammonia build up, and compounding that my tank pH is even higher than neutral around 7.6. I definitely wanted to drip acclimated them though and my thought was to use prime. I know prime can lock up ammonia so I put 3 drops into the container I use for acclimating.
This is the first time I have tried adding the prime, and I was curious on others thoughts in relation to this topic. The shrimp are doing excellent thus far, very active with no issues.
Just based on their natural environments, I don't think most of the fish that we keep are going to care much about sudden changes to pH, temperature, hardness, etc.
I could be wrong, but I generally haven't had a problem with sudden water changes, I always just drop fish into their new environment.
Most of the livebearers(Mollies/Guppies in particular) are from from brackish areas where their water will change rather rapidly with tide, rain, etc.
Most of your Amazon species are similarly from regions prone to flooding, which would also drastically change water conditions in a relatively short period of time.
Many of the other common species you see at pet stores are also of relatively tough stock, like the Danio. They are robust and live in streams that are known for rapid seasonal changes.
None of this is surprising. The freshwater aquarium trade popularized fish which survived. We are left with fish that ship well and are easy to feed.
However, shrimp are a bit different.
While Cherry Shrimp are fairly robust(as are grass shrimp and Amano shrimp), many of the other shrimp have evolved in very limited environments. They were selected for their beauty or other attributes, and not for their hardiness. These shrimp probably do need to be treated carefully. I don't know if it is really osmotic shock, but there does seem to be a high rate of death when suddenly exposed to different water conditions.
Just my 2 cents.
P.S. The shrimp I would be most concerned about are the Sulawesi shrimp,which have evolved in relatively stable water conditions. Caridinia Cantonesis should be relatively hardy, but I believe I saw a paper that said they lacked diversity in isolated populations. They argued that C.Cantonesis(bee shrimp) may have evolved into several sub-species, which would mean that they could be prone to lacking adaptability to wild swings in water conditions, depending on where the domestic strain was acquired and if breeders attempted to "breed in" hardiness. Most shrimp breeders seem to be perfectly happy to treat shrimp as incredibly fragile creatures.
Good points in your post. Apart from a few delicate species (which tend to be pricey), we have the livestock we do because they can handle the conditions involved in bulk capture/breeding and transport.
I wonder how much of this is based on the age of the shrimp when distributed. I have never seen a neo for sale that was larger than a cm and most are even smaller. Even if I were handling guppies or mollies at that size I would consider them delicate. I understand that this size is desirable in nanos, but I suspect that shrimp that have had time to mature are going to be fairly hardy.
Let me share my experience from today. 3 days ago I have ordered 15 Sulawesi shrimps... Received 18 them today at noon in 2 bags (9 in each). Water parameters in the bags were: pH5.9, KH2, GH20, TDS 650, Ammonia 0.25 - I was surprised how they survived this conditions. Instantly I have added 5 drops of Prime. I decide to go with drip method as my tank parameters are quite different: pH8, KH6, GH8, TDS 185. Now, 10 hours after I am still doing drip and parameters are almost equal: pH7.7 TDS 240. All shrimps looking good, and I will drip for 1-2h more.
I used to drip acclimate new fish but now I simply plop and drop. Buy fish, drive home, put the bag in the tank while I change clothes/wash hands, then release the fish. Fast, easy and works for me.
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