first off where are you getting your livestock with freezing/burning up water? 10 degrees from lets say 78 is either an icy 68 or a burning 88. and any typical mean figure you use as your temp a 10deg difference seems more than what should be expected. shippers use heat/cold packs to keep temps stable and local shouldn't be much different than any typical saltwater tank.
iyou can avoid that (worrying about temp acclimation) by floating the bag before drip acclimating or sticking your tank heater in the bucket used to acclimate. that way 15 minutes and you have the same water temp and you can put the heater back in the tank and carry on with the drip (with the drip water keeping your bucket water temp fairly stable there after).
I do one of two things.
a) test the bag water for pH and salinity. if its close to mine I just float the bag or do a fast drip to equalize the temp and dump the fish in (not the bag water). there are probably more things livestock could aclimate to but dagnabit I have never lost any livestock yet (on a side note even when I've just dumped livestock into the tank with no acclimation like the last mushrooms I bought and the bag was leaking something terrible by the time I got in the house. dumped them in and they've been fine)
b)float the bag to equalize temp then do the drip. But I dont do any 2,3 and 4 hour drips. In fact it aint even a drip what I do. I just put the livestock in a bucket with the water it came with and every so often pour in a little tank water both amount and time between adding based on nothing more than my instinctual intuition (obviously I dont dump a large quantity of tank water in at once or quickly but faster than a typical air line drip). when I feel its been enough I dump the livestock in the tank. Until I lose something (and I have hermit, fire shrimp, green emerald crab, turbo snails, false percula clown, damsel, lawnmower blenny, mushrooms, yellow and a few strands of button polyps, christmas tree coral and pom pom xenia) I have no plans to change anything. TOPS my acclimation time is 1hr. I aint recommending it just telling you what I do. a temp spike over 82deg will supposely kill xenia coral so other than watching out for that acclimation has been way overrated for me at least with the type of livestock I keep.
