TwoTankAmin
Fish Connoisseur
The one thing I learned in all my research and also from some personal experience in tanks where heaters malfunctioned, I know the following facts to be accurate.
1. No fish require a specific temperature. What the do need is to be within a specific range of temperatures.
2. If you have a fish in water at either of the two temperatures extremes where it's behaviour indicates if it remains it there it will be dead fairly soon, the solution is, as fast as possible, the get it into water which is within it's normal temperature range. There is not time for acclimation and no need.
3. Species adapt to specific conditions over a period of time. That is why we cannot put fish with thrive in cold water into warm water of soft water fish into hard water etc.
4. Different species of fish have a different range of temperatures in which they can thrive. Species which become an isolate pocket can have the ability to adapt to a somewhat changed range of parameters. This is most likely when the parameter change is somewhat gradual.
4. When science investigates all of this, the one thing they all seem too do before they start the actual experiment is to acclimate the fish to their base conditions for 30 days. This is not a universal,but it is typical. I have seen shorter acclimation periods but they are all measured in days not hours. This includes for temperature. (This is why I am one who never acclimates fish, I plop and drop them.)
Anybody who ships fish know about temperature risk if shipping in the heat of a summer or the freezing cold of the winter. The fish I have bred are all warm water fish. I usually keep their tanks in the low 80sF. I have heater controllers which work in C even the I work on F. I like that because it means they turn on and off in an F range of about 2 dg +/- from a target temp.
I sent out a box of very expensive fish last week. I am not far from NYC and the box went to Buffalo which is in the opposite corener of NY from me. It arrived in a snow storm and was delayed by almost 4 hours from the promised delivery by 9:30 a.m. But the 72 and 30 hours heat packs were working fine and the insulation was good. There were 3 layers of bags and the bottom layer had the coolest temp., in the low 70F. But the fish were all fine. The fish I breed can handle temps from the mid 70s to the low 90s. I have seen them survive at 104F and explode at over 120F. I have seen them survive 69F for a short time as well. Both because of heater malfunctions in a tank or a delayed delivery where the heat packs ran out.
1. No fish require a specific temperature. What the do need is to be within a specific range of temperatures.
2. If you have a fish in water at either of the two temperatures extremes where it's behaviour indicates if it remains it there it will be dead fairly soon, the solution is, as fast as possible, the get it into water which is within it's normal temperature range. There is not time for acclimation and no need.
3. Species adapt to specific conditions over a period of time. That is why we cannot put fish with thrive in cold water into warm water of soft water fish into hard water etc.
4. Different species of fish have a different range of temperatures in which they can thrive. Species which become an isolate pocket can have the ability to adapt to a somewhat changed range of parameters. This is most likely when the parameter change is somewhat gradual.
4. When science investigates all of this, the one thing they all seem too do before they start the actual experiment is to acclimate the fish to their base conditions for 30 days. This is not a universal,but it is typical. I have seen shorter acclimation periods but they are all measured in days not hours. This includes for temperature. (This is why I am one who never acclimates fish, I plop and drop them.)
Anybody who ships fish know about temperature risk if shipping in the heat of a summer or the freezing cold of the winter. The fish I have bred are all warm water fish. I usually keep their tanks in the low 80sF. I have heater controllers which work in C even the I work on F. I like that because it means they turn on and off in an F range of about 2 dg +/- from a target temp.
I sent out a box of very expensive fish last week. I am not far from NYC and the box went to Buffalo which is in the opposite corener of NY from me. It arrived in a snow storm and was delayed by almost 4 hours from the promised delivery by 9:30 a.m. But the 72 and 30 hours heat packs were working fine and the insulation was good. There were 3 layers of bags and the bottom layer had the coolest temp., in the low 70F. But the fish were all fine. The fish I breed can handle temps from the mid 70s to the low 90s. I have seen them survive at 104F and explode at over 120F. I have seen them survive 69F for a short time as well. Both because of heater malfunctions in a tank or a delayed delivery where the heat packs ran out.