The Puffer Forum

You may want to add an airstone & small heater to his bucket.

Thanks, got a air stone in for him, but not enough room for a heater.

I know that seemed very stalker-like, sorry lol. I was just asking because I used to live there. Moved away about three years ago.

OK, he should be in his new tank now, how's he doing?

can someone explain to me the point of drip acclimation for hours in a scenario like this? For brackish water fish, floating in a bag to acclimate temperature should be plenty. In the wild, these fish swim freely between saltwater and freshwater as they please, they don't wait around for four hours getting used to it. Brackish water fish are genetically designed to be immune to harmful osmotic shock. I've watched the owner of my LFS take various brackish fish straight from a fresh water tank to a saltwater tank in a net and none have ever even seemed to notice, they just go right back to picking at food and swimming around.

maybe I'm wrong, but to me, this seems like another "puffing up will kill your puffer fish" myth to me. It just seems to me like, given the fish's natural disposition, I see no reason why a brackish fish such as a GSP can go straight from a HEALTHY freshwater environment to a HEALTHY marine environment without some nonsense drip acclimation.

I emphasize healthy because if your fish is sick/infested or you are working with whack water params, it won't matter what salinity you're talking about, your fish is still going to be in danger.

Disclaimer: I am fairly new at this hobby, and do not claim to know everything. I am only speaking from what I have seen and what I know about basic evolutionary processes and biology. I would LOVE to hear an actual scientific reasoning behind this method other than "the sudden osmotic shock will kill them", because I don't buy it in regards to fish that swim freely between marine, brackish, and freshwater environments whenever they please in their natural environment and life cycle.

I am no scientist either. Simply because they do not swim from a fw environment thru a door that says full sw on the other side.. Swimming thru brackish water would equal acclimatization. Lfs do that doesn't mean they survive after that. They may stay alive or feel fine for a short period maybe.

scpion wrote:I am no scientist either. Simply because they do not swim from a fw environment thru a door that says full sw on the other side.. Swimming thru brackish water would equal acclimatization. Lfs do that doesn't mean they survive after that. They may stay alive or feel fine for a short period maybe.

he has mollies and GSP's that have been in the store for years and often get netted and thrown from fw to bw on a whim just to accommodate different fish or even just to see how they react. He's actually doing a study with a local biology student on the osmotic shock of speed balling brackish fish from fresh water straight to saltwater and vice versa and he's never had a fish react poorly to it, the only ones who have died are those who have been eaten.. He even threw a pair of mollies from one of his community freshwater planted tanks straight into a 1.030 marine tank and a few weeks later they had mated in that tank. I'm not talking about petco here, I'm talking a single guy who has owned the same aquarium/fish shop in downtown green bay for decades. He knows what he's doing.

I'm not saying that people here DON'T know what they are talking about , its just that I hear it over and over and over that you have to drip acclimate brackish fish to saltwater for hours and hours or else they will die, yet I haven't heard any real evidence to support it.. and from what I've seen, it doesn't seem to be true in practice. Its starting to sound like all of the town criers who say if your puffer puffs up he's going to die from the stress, thats just now how it works. These fish have evolved to live in an environment where salinity fluctuates from fresh water to full marine, they seem plenty equipped to handle sudden changes without long term adverse affects.

Like I said before, I invite anyone with more knowledge on the subject (RTR?) to explain it further to me. (I realize that sounds sortof condescending, but I don't mean it that way, I'm being sincere) Because if I'm way off base in my thinking, then I want to know exactly why. I'm here for the same reason as anyone else, to learn and make sure that I'm doing the best I can at what I do.

We say drip acclimate to be safe, why buy a fish and risk damaging it by not taking your time? It's best for the puffer

I agree--it shouldn't take hours, maybe just one or 2.