How To Import and Acclimate the Most Sensitive Imported Fish & Shrimp

Posted on April 4, 2024

Acclimating Imported “Hard To Ship Fish” (Tropical Fish, Neocardina Shrimp, Koi, Goldfish)

WHAT IS “BAG BURN” and WHY DOES IT MATTER?
“Bag Burn” is severe gill and fin damage from Ammonia and other toxins in the shipping bag with fish who have made a very long trip. While it is superficially visible on receipt, it manifests at its most severe one or two days afer shipping. Especially if you don’t know the contents of this document.

BACKGROUND WORTH KNOWING:
Fish are shipped VERY long distances and under a variety of bad conditions all the time. Some always die. Most do not.
The name-of-the-game for the pet industry is to ship as many fish as possible, as light-in-weight as possible, as cheaply as possible.

A shipper may do EVERYTHING right:

  1. Hot or cold packs
  2. Adequate water volume
  3. Reasonable stocking rate
  4. Sedative
  5. Pure oxygen
  6. Fasting before shipping
  7. Nitrogen binders
  8. Methylene blue

BUT when you get the fish they are (almost) always:
1) In water that is perilously high in Ammonia
2) In water with a dangerously low oxygen level
3) Experiencing sky-high CO2 (carbon dioxide) levels
4) Fish waste and other pollutants
5) Ridiculous levels of bacteria
6) Shipping stress, “bag burn” and sky high cortisol
7) Autointoxication with Ammonia

DISCLAIMER: The following are not recommendations being made for *your* “Hard Ship” Fish. These recommendations are first-hand FROM the successful importation of:

1. Neon tetras imported from Hong Kong
2. Wild Cardinal tetras from Peru, and Colombia
3. Costello tetras imported from Indonesia (They’re from Brazil originally)
4. Glass cats imported from Indonesia
5. Fancy Neocaridina shrimp.
Among others. If you know the hobby then you know that some of these fish are some of the hardest to get alive successfully but worth the trouble (or the savings hahaha).

The single-greatest key on the RECEIVING end of the equation is the “make-or-break” process of DRIP ACCLIMATION. This has cut losses on importation of these species in half.

The three basic tenets of Drip Acclimation are as follows.

  1. The process should take about 90 minutes
  2. The process includes MINIMAL agitation of the water
  3. The process is largely NONchemical.

How DRIP ACCLIMATION WORKS

Fish are received by the receiver, and the bags are immediately opened. The fish are transferred *with* 100% of their craptastic water with minimal agitation to tubs, buckets, vats or other bags with MINIMAL agitation.
# Belay the urge to dump and aerate. #

With Neocaridina, tiny Jikin, baby Nankin and other rare and sensitive aquatics they’re just moved to a bucket. The bucket can be tipped to make sure all the shrimp or fish are covered.

If the volume in the receiving bag is 1 quart, prepare a FOUR QUART bucket of “receiving water” from the goal-tank. Add no chemicals.

“90 minutes to quadruple shipping bag volume with goal-water”

Start a siphon on the goal-water donor bucket with plain airline tubing. Immediately tie a knot in the airline tubing to drop the flow of water to a DRIP. A stream is too much water for a bucket or bag. The fastest drip is okay as long as it’s a drip.

For larger volumes, for example Koi in 3 gallons of shipping water – You are trying to move 12 gallons of water into the bag, bowl or bucket over 90 minutes. That’s 2 cups of water per minute. Seems like a lot. It’s 11 gallons in 90 minutes.

The urge to go faster is high. As far as you’re concerned I understand your anxiety: The fish are burning down with the ammonia, they need oxygen, they need to get out of that shitty bacterial soup. To compound your anxiety, some of the fish are listing to one side and that can get worse if they get ‘drunk’ on CO2 dissipation or Oxygen increases.

WHAT IS REALLY HAPPENING WITH LOSSES AND BAG BURN:

Ammonia Auto-Intoxication: In the shipping bag, when the ammonia level is higher OUTSIDE the fish than inside the fish, the ammonia can’t osmose OUT. So the ammonia builds up in the fish’s bloodstream.

When you open the bag and dump the fish – the carbon dioxide dissipates immediately. The pH comes up practically immediately. The Ammonia in the water AND the blood stream ionizes and becomes catastrophically toxic. IN THE BLOODSTREAM where the ammonia was never supposed to be in the first place. This toxic, caustic ammonia is pumped through the kidney, gills and the tiny capillary-beds of the fins.

PUT ANOTHER WAY:
Most “bag burn” and the severest gill damage occurs in the bag at the END of the trip – WHEN IT IS OPENED and the fish are ammonia-shocked by too-fast acclimation.

So importers have slowly discovered that by providing QUADRUPLE dilution of the import water over 90 minutes WITHOUT STIRRING OR AERATING – removed and dilutes enough AMmonia from the bloodstream while SIMULTANEOUSLY reducing carbonic acid (carbon dioxide) slow enough NOT to shock the fishes’ systems.

At the conclusion of the 90 minute drip acclimation the fish, shrimp and other aquatic imports can be moved into the goal-tank.

If the water quality of the goal-tank is great, if the system is and has been at “equilibrium” (best proof of this: System has a dusting of algae appearing in it), and if there are comforting “hides” and the proper temperature, you would support the PH while the fish continue to detoxify their carbon dioxide, and stored ammonia, and RESIST the URGE TO ADD A TON OF CHEMICALS. Aerate aggressively without buffeting the animals.

Real-Life Example

A Shipment of Gambusia From Ebay:

The simplest acclimation of a small Import of Tropical or other Fish:

  1. Estimate the volume of the incoming shipping water.
  2. It might be a pint incoming. So then you will need 4 pints of goal-water.
  3. Move the Gambusia to a bucket. Don’t agitate the water.
  4. Tilt the bucket to make sure the fish are underwater hahahaGet a ziploc bag of “goal water” (Water from their destination tank)
  5. The ziploc should contain FOUR TIMES the volume of the incoming bag.
  6. Hang the ziploc over the incoming fish.
  7. Put a pinhole in the ziploc of goal water. A fast drip is desired.

In 90 minutes the ziploc should be practically empty and the incoming fish are swimming in water that has been slowly diluted by FOUR times the volume.

They can be transferred to the goal system.

No further care should be needed but support the pH in the goal system with a dose of SeaChem Neutral Regulator.