Incompatible Local Aquatic Centre?

[IndySE]

Hallo,
 
Bear with me on this one, its quite an out there theory.
 
I buy my fish primarily from two local aquatics centres, for the sake of objectivity lets call them A and B.
 
90% of my stock were from A, I have lost a few fish from them initially when I first set the tank up but besides then there's been hardly any casualties, barring one or two trapped in plants (probably my fault for overstocking on the number of plants).
 
B however, is a different story. I'd say about 60% of the fish I've bought from there have died. I bought 6 fish 2 weeks ago from there and as of this afternoon 3 have died. My cousin bought some fish from there yet all of his have stayed alive.
 
So I was wondering, could there be some sort of chemical incompatibility between my tank water at home and the water the fish are acclimatised to in their store? Some have survived but I don't really want to keep buying from there if the fish just keep dying...
 
Cheers,
Indy

 

[Sophie]

Some people say it's never best to mix fish from different stores without using a quarantine tank anyway in case of cross contamination.
 
But regardless, floating the bag in the water and slowly adding your water in from the tank would count as the acclimitisation?
Unless something like the pH of the two areas are extremely different? GH/KH etc? Could that be a possibility? Not sure on how far you're travelling between stores and your home?

 

[IndySE]

Hi Sophie,
 
A is about 25 minutes, B is about 35-40 minutes straight drive home. pH could be an issue, I think mines around 7.4 from memory but I'll do another test tonight before I call em to get their opinion.
 
What is GH and KH?
 
Cheers,
Indy

 

[DoubleDutch]

What species did you get. Think it's not fair to compare on this issue. There are so much important points. Waterparameters, stocking of your own tank, possible ilnesses in your tank (for Instance ich parasites are alteady in your tank waiting for stressed / weak fish) aso. Probably if it was the other way around fish from A could have died.

 

[IndySE]

I got 2 x Silver Sharks, 2 x Plecos and 2 x Denisoni Barbs on the day, my tank is a little bit overstocked at the moment though.
 
Nitrites and Ammonia are 0, Nitrate is about 20 and from what I've read is pretty standard.
 
No fish look ill, no white spots or anything like that.
 
Im pretty sure its not the fish from different aquariums but I'm clutching at straws a bit!
 
Cheers,
Indy

 

[Essjay]

What is GH and KH?

 
GH is a measure of the hardness of water. It is actually more important to fish than pH. So if a shop has different hardness from you and you don't acclimate the fish slowly, the sudden change in hardness can affect them.
KH is a measure of how much carbonate the water has. This doesn't affect fish directly. But very low KH can lead to pH crashes, which do affect the fish. And high KH stablilises the pH so much that it is hard to change the pH.

 

[IndySE]

Cheers Essjay, i take it I can get kits for that?

 

[Essjay]

Yes you can. API, amongst others, make them - they work differently from ammonia, nitrite etc testers so make sure you read the instructions thoroughly.
Your water supplier's website should also give your hardness, though they are likely to use words like soft or slightly hard rather than use a number.

 

[IndySE]

I have an API Master test kit that I inherited but I may buy a new one just to be safe, see if I can get the additional bits for the GH and KH.
 
I add a water conditioner when I do a water change as per standard but our tapwater is pretty hard in the area, would it be worth adding some sort of water softener, just to be safe?
 
Cheers,
Indy

 

[Essjay]

If you know your water is hard, you don't need to test it. Unless you also want to check the hardness of the water in the bag from the shop.
 
It is very difficult to make hard water soft. The best way is to mix it with RO water. Or just have fish that can cope with hard water.

 

[misterpro]

A bit late on the ball here, but I was thinking roughly the same thing.
 
Shop A keeps fish in hard water, shop B pretty soft water and the fish you buy there suffer adapting to your hard water.  The fact that they survive over at your cousin shows that it's not the shops fault really.
Do you acclimate the fish slowly? (drip method?)
 
*off topic*
Nice looking female cacatuoides you have there essjay.

 

[IndySE]

I'm not sure what the Drip Method is but here's my usual routine:
 
1) Open the bag and put it in the tank, lights off.
2) 15 minutes or so later, I'll add a cup of the tank water into the bag.
3) 15 minutes or so after that, I'll add another cup of water.
4) 5-10 minutes after that, I'll grab my net and scoop the fish into that then into the tank.
5) I'll then put the light on depending on what time of day I got the fish, the amount of natural light, etc.
 
Does that look/sound ok?
 
Cheers,
Indy
 
Edit: I'm not blaming any shop here, just interested to see what could be causing this

 

[misterpro]

There's nothing wrong with your routine in essence.  Just it might not be gentle enough if your water and the shops water are massively different.  (Or you bought fish in shop B that really don't like hard water whatever you do, in which case you have to settle for other fish species or look into mixing R0 water)
 
Do you by any change know someone with a gh/kh testkit that you could lend for a minute (it's one of those test kits that most aquarists hardly ever need to use)
 
Drip acclimation involves putting the fish you bought in a bucket (preferably one that's reserved for your fish only).  A bit more water then what's needed to swim upright is fine, I throw away the extra shop water (if there is any).  I usually put a few drops of seachem prime in the water, to detoxify any ammonia created on the way back from the shop (or that will be created over the next hour or so without a filter).
Put a piece of airline tubing in your fishtank, down to the bucket, siphoning water from your tank in the bucket.
Tie some knots in the line to make sure you get something like 2 drips per second in the bucket.
Now wait until the bucket is full.  Aim for an hour or however long you want it to be

(adjusting drips if too fast/slow and making sure the bucket doesn't overflow

) then net Mr. Fishy and put him in your tank.
 
I acclimated my oto's this way and havn't lost any yet (2 months+) which I wasn't expecting (they often drop like flies).

 

[IndySE]

Unfortunately I don't know anyone with the kit, I might take a sample of the water and take it to shop A and see if they can check for me. I have decided to forgo shop B from now on, its just not worth the risk of loss of life for the fish. I will be speaking with them to see if I can find out what their water pH is, just to sate my curiosity.
 
Drip acclimation sounds like a pretty interesting thing, I may give it a shot when I've taken some of my rogues back and got the next lot in.
 
Cheers for the advice all!
Indy 

 

[snazy]

1) Open the bag and put it in the tank, lights off.
2) 15 minutes or so later, I'll add a cup of the tank water into the bag.
3) 15 minutes or so after that, I'll add another cup of water.
4) 5-10 minutes after that, I'll grab my net and scoop the fish into that then into the tank.
5) I'll then put the light on depending on what time of day I got the fish, the amount of natural light, etc.
 
Does that look/sound ok?
 

 
I buy from time to time fish from a shop that has signifficantly different water stats. Their water is way softer.
In my case it takes about 2.5-3 hrs to drip acclimate fish from that water to mine. To give you an idea, the Ph difference is from about 6.4(fish bag) to 7.4(my tank water). And as indicated above by someone else, the Ph is not the right indicator but that's the most common measure most people are used to read about.
 I use my TDS meter instead when drip acclimating because it's electronic, it takes a second to test, and it gives a bit better idea about the difference between the two types of water.