Scales and Tails

Acclimation Procedure

Bringing home a new fish or coral is exciting, but can be stressful for the animal. Temperature, alkalinity, and salinity (just to name a few) are reasons that your acclimation procedure is vital to the survival of your new livestock. 

Step 1: Lights

Turn off your aquarium lights. The animals have been in the dark during shipping and it can be extremely stressful to expose them to bright lighting.

Step 2: Float

Leave the bags closed and float them in the aquarium for 15-20 minutes. This will allow the water in the shipping bags to slowly adjust to the temperature in your aquarium.

Step 3: Bucket

We recommend using a clean aquarium bucket or bowl to acclimate the livestock. Drip acclimate fish, inverts and corals separately. Open the bags and place the animals directly into a bucket with the shipping water.

Step 4: Separate 

If you are acclimating corals, make sure that none of the corals are touching each other in the bucket, this is extremely important.

Step 5: Drip

With a drip line – set a slow drip to gradually fill the container with your tank water over the course of 1 hour. If you don’t have a drip line you can add small amounts of your aquarium water every 2-3 minutes over the course of the hour.

After 1 hour it is safe to add the new animals to your aquarium. Never reuse the shipping or acclimation water, it should be discarded.

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