Aquaholics, Inc. Acclimation

Acclimation

At Aquaholics we go the extra mile. ALL incoming pieces are inspected under lighted magnifying glaasses, dipped in Tropic Marin Pro Coral Cure, and quaranteed in seperate tanks. We recommend the following acclimation procedures, PLEASE REMEMBER, despite our strict quarantine procedures and the fact we only ship the healthiest of animals, if at all possible you should always quarantine new live stock for several weeks to insure they are not carrying any sort of harmful bacteria, ect. Always turn your system lights off, or at least bring them to a minimum amount of light during the acclimation process. Acclimation is truely the key to making a successful adaption to your system.

-Remove exterior bags to expose the inner most bag (note that despite our best efforts, certain animals have a tendency to puncture the inner bags so insure the inner bag is not leaking, if it is shed outer layers until you are at the bag layer that is not leaking). Float the animal for at least 15 minutes, or longer if necessary to insure bag water and tank temperature are the same.

-Slowly begin adding small doses of tank water (equivalent to 15% of the volume of water in the bag every 15 minutes or so), re-rubberband the bag and continue to float it. Fill until 70%-75% of bag is full and then remove approximately 2/3 of the water in the bag by either dumping out the water (into something other than you tank), or cupping the water out. Begin to add small doses of tank water again, until bag reaches 75% full. Dump 2/3 of water out (or to top of animal). You may now remove the animal from the bag and place it in your quarantine tank (or main tank if you must). This whole process should take at least an hour. NOTE: for anemonies, sponges and inverts, we highly recommend you continue with the acclimation procedure for a longer period of time, the longer the better (within reason of course, say 5 hours at a max for inverts). Sponges and starfish should not be removed out of water! You will need to continue the acclimation for at least four rounds of step 2 to insure the amount of contamination from shipping water is minimal. All corals should be placed in the lower (middle for most acros, we use 400watt 20k XMs so after shipping stress is over, these guys like to gte pounded by light) reaches of the tank until they acclimate to your lighting for at least 2-3 days, darker colored sps will in the end require more light and over a period of several days should be placed in the top ¼ of your tank depending upon lighting.

The key to remember here is that to insure survival of your animal, they must be acclimated over a reasonable period (3-4 hours for acros, longer for starfish and anenomies). I must admit I am horrified by the acclimation procedures of most LFS'. Many of them float the animal for 15 minutes and then dump it in. These same stores then wonder why they cannot maintain SPS and have high mortality rates with fish and coral. All of our animals, in particular SPS are acclimated over 1-2 hours when receive them. Unless a piece of SPS is RTNing in the bag when we receive it, we do NOT lose SPS due mostly to long acclimation times, zero trates, and good water quality.

Note for zoo's- to insure they do not develop infections, be sure to put high water flow on them for several days, doing so will prevent infection.

**We highly recommend you keep SPS under 20k 400 watt radiums or 20k 400watt XMs (we prefer the XMs). We have achieved dramatic results both in color and growth under these bulbs. Water flow is an absolute must for SPS. We house all of our SPS in tanks with Tunze 6100's. For further acclimation recommendations, go to www.wetwebmedia.com, or utilize some other source.

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