Do you acclimate?

[Armando]

I can't wait to go home and acclimate myself with some beers

 

[3mrhythm]

aclimation is for sissies... heh heh .. if its not strong enough to make the change hows it going to fair later on anyways? .. sometimes .. very rarely do i aclimate .. sometimes i will with some inverts .. prolly the things i really dont need to .. corals .. i never aclimate...

 

[Scarfish]

All snails and hermit crabs I'll throw in the tank...no acclimation. never had any problems. even though they say they can't handle a salinity change very well.

 

[Armando]

You too? Sucks doesn't it, you do all that work and then you stick your hand in there to grab the coral and it's COLD!!!

In order to keep the temperature, you need to float the bag in the sump while you're doing the drip acclimation.

 

[reefsmurf]

Well I believe if you talk to most of the experienced reefers around (meaning not me) acclimation is critical. Most creatures cannot take a quick temperature change (hell even we are not good at it and end up with colds sometimes and we are much more resilient) and we don't really know enough about the other factors that affect marine organisms. Their systems are much more defenseless.

Dr. Shimek has a series on snails and he does point out that snails are actually very stressed if not acclimated and their lifespans are considerably shortened when just dropped in the water (which I have been guilty of before)

I always try to acclimate as much as I can - I know they are lower life forms, but life forms none the less and our pets so I figure you should do what you can to help them out. Hope that's not too preachy. But to each is own.. one man's reef is another man's seafood platter.

 

[TheUltimateNoob]

david, air and water are very different. first of all, water has a lot higher specific heat capacity meaning temperature will not change nearly as quickly as air and land do. that is why when you go swimming late at night after the sun has been long gone and the air is cold, the water will still be warm. also, i was more referring to water in a certain area, especially down along the equator where most of these animals reside. given the water around boston will change temperature with season, along the equator there is only 1 season really, that being summer. also suppose you were in a bath tub and you started the temperature at 70 degrees and slowly over a couple hours increased the temperature to 100 degrees. you'd be fine. now suppose you heated it to 100 degrees and then you jumped right in. i bet you'd feel the burn. fish, in the wild, never deal with instant temperature changes of even 1 degree so even 1 degree could be a bit shocking to them.