Originally posted by ophiura
Well, there are a couple of issues.
The general problem at the LFS is that they are getting animals in that have been in transit for a long time. This leads to an increase in ammonia in the shipping bags, and a decrease in pH (due to respiration - carbon dioxide plus water = carbonic acid which reduces pH). But at lower pH, the ammonia is less toxic. So LFS are walking a line. Certainly fish can adapt to salinity changes rapidly...so the thought is to get them out of the bags ASAP, rather than acclimating, because as they acclimate, pH will increase, and ammonia will become toxic.
I used to manage a large LFS, and did acclimations knowing what Ophiura stated.
1) I would float the bags for 30 minutes or so, while filling a bunch of 5 gal buckets with system water- then put airstones in each bucket.
2)I would then take a couple random new fish bags, and test their pH and salinity. I would use Sodium Biphosphate (pH down), to drop the bucket's pH, as well as adjusting salinity, to that of the incoming fish.
3)Dump the fish bags thru a net, discarding the incoming water, and place the fish into the buckets.
4)Over the course of 1-3 hours (depending on incoming pH) I would raise the bucket's pH with bicarb (pH up) until it was at 8.0-8.2.
5) Add new fish to dimly lit display tanks.
6) On day 2, I would turn the lights back on.
Bucket vs. tank temp was not an issue, as we heated the whole fishroom, rather than heating the tanks.
This method proved very effective, unlike the drip acclimation. As Ophiura stated, as the pH goes up, so does the toxicity of ammonia. Drip methods bring up the pH, but also bring up the ammonia. Dripping is fine for the trip from LFS to home. Fish bagged for over 24hrs, should NOT be drip acclimated.
