You have no way of knowing what the salinity of the tank at the pet store is (unless someone tells you) The best thing to do is to float the bag to equlize temp. Then you can help acclimate the fish in the bag to your tank's specs. by slowly taking water from your tank and moving it to the bag. The slower and more you do this the better. So I would take as long as you possibly can doing this since salt-water fish are more sensitive that Freshwater fish.

 

so the drip method is the best bet all around?

 

If you buy a fish at the petshop and arrive home within 3 hours, which is pretty much always going to be the case, then there's no reason to worry about anything. Drip away with impunity.

 

I agree with Salt. Also, keep in mind that transfer shock is more of a risk for salt water fish.

 

How exactly do you drip?

 

put the fish and the bag water in a container, add a small cup full of your tank water every 10 minutes or so, keep doing so till the container is filled, dump half the water out, and start again adding the cups of water, basically. the idea is to slowly change the water in the bag into to water in your tank, it will gradually change the temperature, the ph and the salinity and everything else. so your fish dont freak out.

 

It's pretty much what it sounds like:

You put the fish into a big bowl, and somewhere above that you place a container of water from the new tank. Start a drain or siphon going from the 2nd container down to the bowl with the fish. Clamp it with a clamp or put a little valve on the hose or something, and set it to allow only a dripping of water into the bowl. This results in the bowl water mixing very slowly with the tank water.
When the bowl is full, dump out half of it and repeat until full again, at which point the job is pretty much done.

 

Ahhhhhh good to know, thanks.

 

I use a knot in the tubing instead of a clamp, works just as well.