There are certain questions that I get asked on a regular basis and one of the most common is about acclimation. It is a topic many experienced hobbiest take for granted but it is also a topic with many misconceptions.  For the first part of this post we will look at the standard methods and than we will discuss some of the issues and misconceptions you should be aware of.

At its most basic acclimating is the process of preparing a freshly aquired wetpet to its new home in your aquarium.  This is generally done by diluting the water the wetpet came in with the water from your aquarium and there are two primary methods. One is floating the bag, the other is the drip method.

Floating the Bag

Most people will first float the sealed bag for 15 minutes or so to allow the temperature in the bag to equalize to get the bag water to the tanks temp. When you open the bag you want to keep the bag as intact as possible. The reason is that the simplist way to float a bag, and keep the contents in the bag, is to roll the top of the bag down forming a collar. You should roll it down enough times that it forms a fairly ridgid collar that traps lots of air.  Now when you place the bag in the aquarium it will float open end up. Depending on the amount of current in the tank, or the amount of weight in the bag, you may have to attach the bags to the side of the tanks. I have giant woodworkers clothes pin type gizmos I use.

Now take a big $1 store turkey baster and squirt a baster full of water in the bag.  I squirt a baster of water in the bag every 15 minutes.

The bucket/drip method

is best used for anything sensitive. I used the two   bucket method. I have small buckets  (one had 2lbs of carbon and one had 4lbs in it when new) and I open the bag and pour the contents into which ever bucket will work best and then place that inside a 5 gal pail and leave it until it overflows. Use airline with an air valve mid way. I use frag plugs wrapped in elastic bands to weight each end of the airline. Start the siphon, adjust the valve to get 1 to 10 drops a second and leave it for 1 to 3 hours depending on whats in there.

it varies huge from animal to animal. Some animals/fish are pretty tough and can literally just be released into the tank … no one does that though unless its an emergency or something. Some animals/fish should not be exposed to air by removing them from water. Some suffer a severe strain with even minor differences in the water chemistry. 

A good rule of thumb, if no good information is handy, is that the deeper the water it came from the more sensitive it is. The shallower, the tougher. When I was a kid we used to skip sidewinder crabs on their backs across the tidal pools similar to skipping rocks. Those things were so tough that they would land legs out and running  Oddly enough most everyone floats the bags with the new wetpet in it in the aquarium to equalize the temperature