Acclimatising the fish
What do I buy ?
Water conditions / changes ; salt ; New Tank syndrome for the layman
Which one should I choose ?
Acclimatising the fish :
Many people start their first tank with livebearers like guppies , mollies or platys . Bringing home a fish from the shop and dumping it straight into a new tank is a no no . It might go into shock if it is already stressed out from the trip home and no George Clooneys' in scrubs are going to bring it back to life . Usually I would recommend floating the bag on the tank for up to 20 minutes although I don’t always follow the rule . Next open the bag and let in some of the water especially so if it has been determined that the shops, water conditions are vastly different from the home tank .
In other words starting a tank today and dumping new fish in on the same day is strongly discouraged . I found that out the hard way . A fish needs to be acclimatised to the new set up gradually . Sometimes though , the fish and tank arrive together by default ( say a kid comes home from school with a bag of fish from a field trip and Mommy has to rush out to buy a tank for the fish ) then one has to cope as best as one can given the circumstances , Ideally the new set up should be allowed to break in for at least a day and this is the barest minimum . One should set up the substrate , filter , plants etc AT LEAST ( meaning more is better ) a day in advance .
When I had my first tank as an adult I set it up under those conditions . A sudden bagful of fish held out by a beaming kid . I know nothing about ammonia and nitrates as I am not into water chemistry .
What do I buy ?
What type of fish to buy depends on your local water and what you are willing to go through to make it right for your fish . I highly recommend livebearers ( guppies , mollies , Platys , Swordtails being the most common ) or a Betta ( Siamese Fighting Fish ) as a first fish as they bear live young … the later being easy to care for and both are pretty hardy . Easy fish cause less heartache and stress for the owner . If your local water has special ingredients it may be best to keep locally bred fish who are already adapted to your waters or to keep native fish . This is something a good local fish shop ( LFS ) should be able to help you with .
Water conditions / changes ; salt ; New Tank syndrome for the layman
While not exactly brackwater fish , guppies and platys do benefit from alittle aquarium salt added to their water .. I go by an average of 2 teaspoons of aquarium salt to every 15 to 20 litres . However you have to find out when you buy them is the store uses any salt in their water . Because if they do not ( afterall the shop is just a temp home for these fishies ) , your fish will / might go into shock if you dump them into a salty tank at home . This amounts to a sudden change in environment which adds up to stress . They will then adapt if you add it slowly over say two weeks ??? Mollies by the way are brackish fish they need salt to thrive . However because they live in estuaries where the tide turns up and down daily , the amount of salt in their water can be dialled up or down as well . Some fish however do not like salt in their water or prefer to live without it but can adapt to it if necessary .
Most live-bearing ( fish that give birth to live young ) to my experience do better with some degree of aquarium salt in their water . They are pretty adaptable and can get by with NO SALT if they are trained slowly to adapt to it , but in the long run have less problems with some salt .
The thing that puzzles most aquarists is :
How much should I add ? Web advice is conflicting . It can vary from 1 teaspoon to every 20L to 4 for the same amount . I use 2 teaspoons to every 15 or 20L for my tanks and tubs . How much you add really depends on the type of fish you have in your community and the conditions they were raised in when they were born . OR you could either keep fish that require salt or CAN live with it , or don’t salt your tank/tub/pond and keep fish that are happy with that environment .
Livebearers include fish like Mollies , Platys , Swordtails , Guppies , Halfbeaks etc . THERE are more but the first 4 are more common in the regular aquarium .
I can do without it
Adaptability :
As mentioned earlier , while they get by with no salt , some is great . This is especially true in the case of mollies which are brackish fish . These are found in the wild in estuaries . There they face changes in salinity at least twice a day . Salt water when the tide goes in and fresh water when the tide goes out .
So a molly can take to different degrees of salinity and in some cases they have been trained to live in marine conditions . Other fish like BETTA SPLENDENS ( aka Siamese Fighting fish = Siamese Chauvenist fish ) do better in totally fresh water that is preferably on the soft side and has a ph of less then 7 . Some people add afew drops of Black Water Extract to the Betta’s water but it isn’t totally necessary unless you want a top grade fish that is going to be used for breeding .
So you want a livebearing fish or another fish for that matter . Do you add salt to your home tank ?
What other types of fish do you have in your home tank / pond ? Are the other residents compatible with the salt requirements of a molly raised in salt ? OR a molly raised with no salt ?
What conditions were the new fish raised in ?
IF the new fish to be added were raised in salty conditions , then dumping them into no salt can bring on stress and the fish may just die or catch a disease from shock . This can be overcome by keeping them in a quarantine tank where the salinity requirements can be raised or lowered over two weeks gradually to avoid stress . I do agree this is troublesome but in the long run it prevents outbreaks of disease .
Adapting a salt-y fish to a no salt environment means doing water changes in the quarantine tank not adding salt with each new change until the water in the quarantine tank is just about on par with the receiving pond or tank .
This goes the other way about . If the fish was raised in a saltless ( for the lack of a better word ) environment , in the quarantine tank raise the salinity bit by bit . The QUARANTINE tanks serves to let the aquarist observe the new fish for signs of disease which stressed fish may exhibit within the first two weeks of being brought into a new environment .
If you do not have a quarantine tank for this purpose , then you may have no choice but to use a short gunned adapt or die method . This is not foolproof and a fish may or may not live depending on how strong it was in the first place .
Float the bag of new fish on the receiving tank for 15 minutes at least . This allows the new fish to acclimatise to temperatures gradually .
Open the bag and add some water from the receiving tank or pond to the bag and leave it . This process may take from an hour to a few hours . But given the circumstances it allows a higher chance for the fish’s system to adapt to the new ph , temperature and salinity of it’s receiving environment .
You have to remember that water to the fish is like air to us people . If I were to shove you into a room with a higher degree of Carbon Dioxide ( the gas we breathe out ) some people might feel faint .
When the two conditions are more or less equal , open the bag and release the fish . Good luck to you !
Initially my first lot of mollies / guppies were dying like crazy .. that was when I turned to the fish list and read off the Internet . I added aquarium salt and there was no turning back after that . Even in unsuitably crowded conditions ( it was my first tank and I was a newbie ) they were mating and multiplying . Then I had another problem . I couldn’t keep the fry alive . They were born healthy but died soon after . Again I turned to the net .
New Tank Syndrome and water changes :
I found out that there was this condition called the new tank syndrome . Initially when a tank is set up , there are no beneficial bacteria to aid the decomposition of fish wastes . This has to be built up gradually over 6 weeks . In the meanwhile the tank needs afew fish to kick start this process . No waste and the bacteria have nothing to feed off they die . Too much waste and the bacteria can’t cope , the fish will die .
So Many experts recommend that you set up a new tank with just afew fish ( depending on size ) . In the meanwhile , regular 10% or so water changes with fresh treated water ( to get rid of chlorine etc ) every 2 or 3 days would be a good idea . Normal maintenance depends on the number of fish in the tank . It could go from 20% every week to 40% a month but frequent small changes are safer .
This may not be necessary but would be safer . I didn’t conform to the 5 fish now then 6 weeks later add more rule , but I kept up with the water changes and that kept the toxins down . The new water dilutes the toxins . I added a new fish say every twice a week until my old stock was completely in the new tank .. this took a couple of weeks . This rule applies to adding new fish to a set up tank too . Although I have to admit that the web advice of waiting makes more sense . ( At that time I was fearful my old tank would give way and I had no silicone on hand ) .
Which one should I choose ?
At the shop select the best and healthiest looking fish . That brings you less heartache later . There have been occasions when I walked into a shop full of hope and walked out again because I saw the most beautiful fish in a tank that had a sick fellow tankmate , or it shared the filtration system with a neighbouring tank with a sick fish . I have brought home a great fish too from a tank that had a suspicious looking ( in health fish ) but isolated it for awhile to see if anything developed . In this way your current stock is less likely to be affected .
I still go heart thumping the day I release a fish into the main tanks in-case I am making a mistake . I am no expert and sometimes can’t trust my own judgement . I have been lucky so far …I have had problems but they have been tackled pretty fast thanks to aquaria-freshwater . I have since joined another great site : Angie And Andrews hosted at msn groups
click on this picture to get to my story about how I got infected with fish TB