Acclimating Newly Aquired Fish

[Moutain Dew]

Just wondering how people are doing it... Do you treat fish with meds when you get them? how long quarantine?

[AccidentalAquarist]

I usually do a 1-3+ week quarantine depending on the source of the fish

1 week mature fish from established tanks that I know personally

3 or more weeks for everything else. Don't trust a tank you don't know personally

medication - I use dewormer as a matter of course on wild caught fish. Otherwise I watch, diagnose and treat as needed in my Q tanks

[FunkSolid]

For the actual acclimation process going from bag to tank I do not recommend the drip method (unless you have an RO system, then you can ignore everything I’m about to say). The combination of high pH, and hardness of our tap water will cause any Ammonium (NH₄⁺) in the bag to be deprotonated to Ammonia (NH₃) if we add our water. This process will cause a drastic spike in the toxicity in the water and not be beneficial to the already stressed out fish. I do temperature acclimation for 15-20 minutes by placing the bag inside the tank. Then I pour the bag into a wastewater container through a large net, then add fish from net to tank. Your also decreasing the likelihood of pathogens being transferred from a potentially sketchy source to your tank.

I love using SeaChem Paraguard to clean off external pathogens that are associated with the new fish going into quarantine. I usually do a 24-48h go with that stuff. If they are wild-caught I totally do a de-worm (flubendazole) and I also do an anti-protozoan med (Metro or quinacrine dihydrochloride). Finally if I’m not being an impatient fool, I QT for 4 weeks.

Hope that helps!

Edited April 17, 2016 by FunkSolid

[RD.]

Some good solid advice from the previous two posters. The only thing that I would add is to feed sparingly for the first several days while the new fish adjust to their new surroundings, and to that I typically feed either epsom soaked pellets, or New Life Spectrum Hex-Shield pellets for 3-5 days to neutralize any internal pathogens such as spironucleus vortens. It's a very safe, very effective way to prevent stress issues that are often triggered by netting and moving fish around.