Bringing home your new fish

[yvez9]

Bringing a new pet home is exciting, but you must know that fish are very sensitive to the water they live in. A difference in hardness, pH or temperature can be very stressing to a fish, to the point where it can kill them!

When you bring the fish home, patience is the key word. The longer time you take, the better it is for your fish.

The first and easiest thing to do is match temperatures between water in the bag and your tank. To do this, simpy let the bag float in the tank for at least 15 minutes, there's nothing wrong if you let it float a bit longer.

Now what you want to do is open up the bag. Make sure the fish can't get out. An easy way I find to do this is leave a part of the bag hang out of the tank and close the cover. Otherwise, a paper clip is good...

With the bag open, take a small cup with a little bit of water (no more than about 1/4 of what's in the bag already) and pour it in the bag slowly as not to create a big wave in there for the poor fish. Wait at least 10 minutes and repeat 5 times at least. The key here is to adapt the water the fish is in to your water. Of course, the lesser water you put in at a time and the longer you wait to pour water, the easier this will be on the fish.

Once the bag contains mainly your tank's water, wait another 10 minutes then release the fish in your tank. It is better if you net the fish out of the bag and then put him in the tank. This will prevent the pet store's water (which can't be trusted in most cases) to enter your tank.

Then dispose of the water and save the bag, you will need it when MTS (multiple tank syndrome) hits and you want to move fish around tanks You can't have too many bags!!!

Last but not least, watch your new fish explore it's new habitat for countless hours!

 

[cyprinut]

When you bring the fish home, patience is the key word.

Good advice, yves9. I'd futher that and say that patience is the most critical thing a new fishkeeper can have, especially when cycling a tank or considering adding new fish to a new tank.

 

[yvez9]

True, or pretty much patience is a key at all times, either you're cycling, acclimating new fish, treating for a disease...

Fishkeeping is all about being patient!

 

[spanishguy111]

Well done. Another piece of info that hadnt been covered.

 

[laurasmithuk]

can this be posted at all? great article and might need it for future ref

 

[Siamese Fighter05]

Last but not least, watch your new fish explore it's new habitat for countless hours!

[snapback]910359[/snapback]​

Yep diffently!! But not until you turned the tank light off and given them the rest of the day to get used to everything, great little article though will help people !!!

 

[spanishguy111]

Id like to add one more thing about bringing fish home- actually a few things:

Firstly- don't light shock new fish. Turn your lights off and leave them off the whole day. Obviously if the fish acclimates more quickly than that bring them on, but only do so gradually. Be cautious with everything until you get to know different species behaviours and patterns.

That includes light shocking in the car. "Hey lemme see the fish" you take it out and it bolts to the bottom of the bag so hard you feel it. This is bad. You've just scared the fish. Keep the bag dark. This will keep the fish from moving about too much as they cant see where they are. It also relaxes them somewhat. Also try to keep the bag the same temperature. In the winter if its cold this may involve putting the bag next to your belly inside your jacket.

Secondly- some animals will bag shock. This includes a small number of extremely sensitive fish and almost all invertebrates (excluding 99% of snails). If you put a bunch of ghost or amano or cherry shrimp in a bag, and dont throw in some java moss or mesh or something for them to hold on to, they will shock from being in contact with plastic. I don't understand why- I don't know that anyone does, but it happens. This forces them to molt within approximately 48 hours which is bad if they've already molted recently as their new skin won't be ready yet. This can cause death obviously. Most stores dont know. Insist. Always.

And finally- the longer you have fish in a bag, the lower the pH drops (sealed environment, higher concentration of carbonic acid (co2),). So really follow that first post about gradually mixing the water- and try to never mix in the pet shop water directly with yours. It was all very well put.

This might seem obvious- but I've seen some stuff... and I was a newb once too. Do everything over a bucket- of water. If you drop a fish you don't want it in your tub or sink or on your floor... where it might no longer be in one piece or alive. Make sure your fish arrive alive. Don't drink and Aquascape.

 

[rdd1952]

All good points. I usually buy my fish after work or at night so they get the full night without lights (about 10 hours). As for the point about shrimp, I had not heard that before but I will say my 2 experiences with shrimp have been good. I bought 2 ghost shrimp back in January. Brought them home in a bag and they are still doing fine. Neither one molted for several months. I also bought 6 amano shrimp back in May or June. One of those that I put in my betta's tank died the next day but the other 5 that went in the community tank are still doing fine too.

This is another article that has good info that newbies could use. I wish all the good info in pinned topics could be combined into one pinned article. I think newbies see so many pinned articles and don't know where to start so they just skip them all together.