acclimating too fast

predator · 07-26-2005, 06:29 PM

what are the biological effects on a fish if they are acclimated to fast?

example you have a 10 gallon tank that you leave alone for 2 weeks come back and it has gone from 1.015 to 1.03.

your fish are alive, but are very stressed. these fish have been known to withstand salt water salinity and would be fine if properly acclimated.

what is happening to the fish do livers shut down are is it a problem that can be fixed by slowly restabilizing the system?

shev · 07-26-2005, 07:00 PM

Quote:

these fish have been known to withstand salt water salinity

hmmm, then is it a brackish water fish if it can "withstand" saltwater? brackish water fish are built to move from different concentrations of salinity , and their kidneys should adapt pretty quickly. some brackish water fish can move up stream to fw conditions or back out to sw conditions. even when in the same spot in the body of water salinities can fluctuate from day to day from extra rain, or tides.

errr uuuh, 1.03? thayts quite a bit. SW is around 1.025.

**Cichlid Man** · 07-26-2005, 07:12 PM

Jeez! Someones been chucking in the sodium chloride.

**TheOldSalt** · 07-26-2005, 09:33 PM

Brackish fish have to expend a lot of extra metabolic energy to maintain themselves in salt or fresh water. That takes away from the energy needed to do everything else in the fish's body, and since the osmoregulatory system is pretty much set at "priority one," the other things start to suffer from lack of fuel and lack of maintenance materials. Some fish can go a long time at either extreme, or at one particular extreme, but some can't make it a month before suffering various system failures. They're built to stay in the brackish zone and deal with the extremes for a short time, and this works well because in nature they can get back to the brackish water before having any problems. In a tank they're at it's mercy.

The effects of a too-rapid change can be anything from the usual shock & exhaustion to dehydration or edema on the cellular level, but it would take a really big change, and a very sudden one, to do much damage to a brackish fish.

The upshot of all this is that your change wasn't all that big nor all that sudden, which probably means it didn't do any real damage, and that you can fix it by simply adding some fresh water each day until the tank is full again, maybe 1 cm of tank water level per day to be on the safe side.

predator · 07-27-2005, 08:06 PM

ok thanks thats what ive been doing for the last couple of days... and im hoping the stress lvls will drop eventually and all will go to notmal

07-26-2005, 06:29 PM	#1
predator Pirates get all the booty Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Little Rock, AR Age: 25 Posts: 230	acclimating too fast what are the biological effects on a fish if they are acclimated to fast? example you have a 10 gallon tank that you leave alone for 2 weeks come back and it has gone from 1.015 to 1.03. your fish are alive, but are very stressed. these fish have been known to withstand salt water salinity and would be fine if properly acclimated. what is happening to the fish do livers shut down are is it a problem that can be fixed by slowly restabilizing the system?

07-26-2005, 07:12 PM	#3
Cichlid Man Super moderator Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 2,100	Jeez! Someones been chucking in the sodium chloride. __________________ If you have a big enough tank with enough hiding places, pH of around 7, you can keep virtually any fish together as long as all the fish are around the same size and these two groups of fish are avioded: Serrasalmus Tetradon(figure eights and dwarfs are the exception). I keep a successful community of fish in a 4 foot tank including the following families: Cichlids, tetras, loaches, gouramis, barbs, rainbows, livebearers, killiefish, catfish, puffers.

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07-26-2005, 09:33 PM	#4
TheOldSalt Darth Ichthyos Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 4,360	Brackish fish have to expend a lot of extra metabolic energy to maintain themselves in salt or fresh water. That takes away from the energy needed to do everything else in the fish's body, and since the osmoregulatory system is pretty much set at "priority one," the other things start to suffer from lack of fuel and lack of maintenance materials. Some fish can go a long time at either extreme, or at one particular extreme, but some can't make it a month before suffering various system failures. They're built to stay in the brackish zone and deal with the extremes for a short time, and this works well because in nature they can get back to the brackish water before having any problems. In a tank they're at it's mercy. The effects of a too-rapid change can be anything from the usual shock & exhaustion to dehydration or edema on the cellular level, but it would take a really big change, and a very sudden one, to do much damage to a brackish fish. The upshot of all this is that your change wasn't all that big nor all that sudden, which probably means it didn't do any real damage, and that you can fix it by simply adding some fresh water each day until the tank is full again, maybe 1 cm of tank water level per day to be on the safe side.

07-27-2005, 08:06 PM	#5
predator Pirates get all the booty Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Little Rock, AR Age: 25 Posts: 230	ok thanks thats what ive been doing for the last couple of days... and im hoping the stress lvls will drop eventually and all will go to notmal

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