Acclimating in a heavily planted high Co2 tank

[deftones2015]

What is a good way to acclimate the fish into my tank? It's heavily planted with high Co2. My fish I currently have are fine and the drop checker shows the Co2 level is fine. I put one fish I bought today in after acclimating with a little bit of my water into the bag for about 30 mins but when I put him in he started gasping and hasn't left the surface for a few hrs now.

Any suggestions?

[Green Leaf Aquariums]

Sounds like high co2 levels and your fish need o2. I would stop co2 and start slow with the injection. More 02!

[BiscuitSlayer]

I had the same thing happen to me the other day. All of the sudden, my fish where gasping at the surface when I was in the process of adding a few new fish. The newest change I had made to my tank was a DIY co2 reactor, and I think that the plants might have respirated more than normal causing an O2 drop.

I did a 30% water change with cooler water than my tank, I cut off the CO2 for a few hours, and I added a powerhead with a venturi tube to oxygenate the water quickly. After I did all of this, everything was fine for the next couple of days. I also backed off a little bit on the CO2. I have been slowly increasing it day by day.

I forgot to mention that this all happened while my lights and CO2 were off.

[Khandurian]

When I acclimate fish to my planted co2 tank, I use the drip method. It's a large tank, so I drip into a 5 gallon bucket. Takes almost half a day before the bucket fills up.

Have never lost a fish yet doing this.

[Homer_Simpson]

I placed an Oto, Albino Bristlenose Pleco and Siamese Algae Eater in my heavily planted high c02(30 ppm as measured with a c02 drop checker) 40 gallon tank 2 months ago and they are still alive and kicking. The following is my Drip acclimitization setup and in all the years that I have used it to acclimitize new fish, I have never lost a fish.
http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/f...on-set-up.html

Also, I would stay away from the floating bag method for reasons mentioned in this article.
http://www.bestfish.com/tips/050798.html

[eon17]

drip method wont be effective because the c02 will just diffuse into the air when it drips. rthe water in bucket will still have a lower c02

[Homer_Simpson]

Originally Posted by eon17

drip method wont be effective because the c02 will just diffuse into the air when it drips. rthe water in bucket will still have a lower c02

Worked for me! The fish survived the higher c02 levels in the tank when they were put in after being drip acclimitized. Like I said the fish are still alive and kicking. If what you say is true, then none of the fish would have acclimitized to the higher c02 levels in the tank after being drip acclimitized. And all the fish were purchased from stores where they were in non-planted non-c02 tanks.

[Madfish]

I use the drip method and I love it I have never had any problems from it other than once a fish jumped out of the bucket. Now I put the lid over it with about a 1/4in gap half way around the bucket. And it seems to work great.

[BiscuitSlayer]

I think these guys are dead on with the drip method. It really should be the standard IMO with fish aclimation. Sure you will probably have some CO2 loss with the drip method, but I wouldn't imagine that it would be all of it.

[ingg]

eon, why would you state that? Have you actually experienced issues due to that? Do you seriously think that the drip method refers to water dripping from a height into the body of water in the bucket and not a rate of flow?

Just in case you do, and are purely going off of a misguided conjecture - the name refers to the rate of water exchange, and the tubing can (and is in my bucket) be submerged into the bucket, maintaining a good amount of the CO2 levels in the bucket. Yes, it'll still offgas eventually, but saying that it all offgases due to a drip is inaccurate.

Sudden PH changes are just as dangerous as sudden temperature changes, and the drip method addresses them both, at least to some degree.


I also use this method, started recently, and it works incredibly well. Far less (read: none) shock to the fish.

[eon17]

i know. but the bucket has no co2 injection so it will all get lost over the long time of dripping. i dont feel that fish need to be acclimated to co2 specifical because co2 does not affect them, just lack of 02. the ph from it wont mees with the fish but do whatever you want...

[JustOneMore21]

The water is constantly being dripped/added into the bucket......and being co2 rich, it constantly adds more, so all the co2 does not get offgassed.

Fish can be affected by high CO2 in a tank when they've come from a tank with no CO2 injection. I've seen it with my own fish and even moving fish from tank to tank (from no co2 to high co2) I drip acclimate the fish. If they are not used to high CO2 levels, it will affect them.

I use this as my standard method of acclimating fish now and have not had any fish die so far.

[Homer_Simpson]

Originally Posted by eon17

... dont feel that fish need to be acclimated to co2 specifical because co2 does not affect them, just lack of 02. the ph from it wont mees with the fish but do whatever you want...

O.k. try this and make sure you have a fish net to quickly scoop out the fish and place him back in his/her original water as it is unethical not to do so.

Use the Bag Floating Method in a high(at least 30 ppm as measured via c02 drop checker) c02 tank. Now after the prescribed time

(15-30 minutes), chuck the fish in the c02 tank and tells me what happens. Unless you get lucky, you will likely see the fish swim around for about 10 seconds, eventually undergo paralysis, where it will remain motionless gasping with gills going non-stop. If you do the same thing but place the fish in a non c02 injected tank, he will be fine. How can I be sure, I have done this myself. If you use the Bag Floating Method or no method and decide to place a fish from a non c02 tank into a c02 tank, you do so at your own risk and don't be surprised if your new fish starts having seizures.

I have kept fish for over 9 years and the one thing that I can definitely say is that it is c02 poisoning, from excess c02, and not PH differences that kill fish placed in an aquarium. I have purchased fish many times where I confirmed that the store's aquarium had a PH of 7 whereas my aquarium had a PH of 8+. The store bought fish that were drip acclimitized, via the bucket method, and then placed into my tank always made it. The only fish that I killed was an Elderly(9 year old) Siamese Algae Eater when I set the c02 level in my tank too high.

[ingg]

PH DOES "mess with fish", so you know, and can be every bit as fatal in tank exchanges as the temperature differences people float bags for. (And if you actually go through a proper floating sequence, you start adding tankwater to the floating bag, achieving - guess what - PH balance! )

Large sudden differentials in PH can burn the linings of gills if I remember it right, and is (luckily for us) even more dangerous when going from low PH to high PH - and this initial damage combined with the stress of a move is an absolutely fantastic way to prep a fish to be susceptible to diseases. But, you do what you want.

BTW, go ahead and start googling for fish acclimitization - and see how many times PH is listed right next to temperature. It seemed odd to me that more saltwater people realize that it must be slowly matched just as temperature is. Maybe it is becuase freshwater folks don't typically spend bucks on a single fish like they do, so they may just be a bit more up to speed on good procedure.

[Homer_Simpson]

Perhaps, my choice of words was poor.

I am not necessarily saying that PH does not mess with fish. But it is the frequent large fluctuations in PH that cause issues not differences adjusted for by drip acclimitization. Where there is a huge difference between my tank water PH and the store tank PH, and in some cases we are talking a difference of 1+ points, I have just acclimitized fish over a longer period of time, say 2-3 hours instead of 1 hour, and I have never lost any fish. Ammonia spikes are also most deadly to fish under high Ph conditions as I also understand.