Acclimating Saltwater Fish the Turkey Baster Way

Contributed by Don Carner

The Pros

• The turkey baster acclimating method is a gentle, safe and easy way to introduce saltwater fish to a new home, and usually takes less than an hour to complete.
• Eventually all the original bag water will be diluted and replaced by your own tank's water.
• This technique facilitates re-oxygenation of the bag water during acclimation and introduces the fish to the unique pH and other chemical properties of your system.
• Acclimation shock or other horror situations such as getting gills caught in nets or fins entangled while trying to remove the fish from the transportation bag are avoided, because NO nets, scoops or other stress inducing methods are used.
• If you are acclimating several fish at one time and any are of a toxic releasing or poisonous stinging nature, such species are individually confined.
• This procedure can be used to acclimate all types of marine as well as freshwater livestock.

The Cons

• Moving too fast and not allowing adequate time for proper acclimation.

Acclimation Instructions

1. Remove or open the tank cover or lid, open the shipping bag and gently lower it into your aquarium. Drape the opened end over the outside tank wall and secure, if necessary, with a weight of some kind. An algae magnet works quite well. Allow sufficient time for the bag water to stabilize with the water temperature of your system's. Remember, the more water volume in the bag, the longer this period may take. Usually, I have found that 15 minutes is plenty.
2. Using a large turkey baster that is plastic, has no metal parts and is new, add 1 or 2 full squeeze bulbs of your tank water to the bag. Wait about 10 minutes.
3. Remove 4 full squeeze bulbs of water from the bag and discard, then add another 2 bulbs of your tank water. Wait about another 10 minutes.
4. Remove 3 bulbs of water from the bag and discard, then add 2 more bulbs of your tank water. Wait another 10 minutes.
5. Repeat this process until the entire recycling of bag water is complete. If you want you can test the pH, salinity, and temperature of the bag water to see if these parameters match that of your tank water at this point to check if acclimation is complete.
6. Gently submerge the entire bag under water and allow the fish to swim out under it's own power.

Tips

• If a dealer uses copper sulphate in their tanks for parasite control, this method eliminates the fear of introducing any copper into your system from the shipping water. However, some residual copper may be present in the water that often clings to the upper-most portion of the bag and does not get changed. In this scenario, it may be advantageous to remove the bag from the aquarium and use a plastic scoop or a small net to remove the fish from the bag and place into the tank. This is especially critical in reef tank systems where even trace copper can be detrimental to inverts and corals.
• It doesn't hurt to add an ammonia buffer or destroyer such as AmQuel to the bag water prior to starting the procedure, as ammonia build up may still occur while the fish is kept here, no matter how long completion of acclimation takes.