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I love getting new livestock for my aquarium. It is probably one of my favorite things to do. When you decide to purchase your first fish or coral you should use the Drip system to acclimate them. Here is a basic run down of the steps:

1. Place the fish with the bag water in a bucket that is big enough for the fish, and so that the fish is coved in water.

2. Place the bucket next to the aquarium where you will be placing the fish into.

3. Using plastic air tubing and an air valve, make a siphon drip line from the aquarium you will be placing the fish into, to the bucket.

4. Start the siphon. Allow the tank water to slowly drip into the bucket using the air valve to adjust the dripping rate.

5. When the water dripped into the bucket equals about two to three times the volume of the bag water you started with, you will then want to test the pH, salinity and temperature of the bag water to see if these parameters match that of your tank water. When they match then the acclimation is complete.

6. Remove the fish and place it in the tank the drip water came from.

Ryan’s Hints:

If you bought more than one fish and any of them are known to release toxins, always acclimate them separately in a different bucket. Take your time because this process usually takes two hours to complete.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 9:18 am and is filed under Reef Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.