Moving the from low nutrient/salinity QT to full strength SPS reef system..... 15 min drip...?

[Treehrtsme]

Would it be considered reasonable to move any fish quite frankly up in salinity from 1.021 to 1.024 with only a 15-minute drip acclimation and expected to thrive? I'd have major concerns about the jumping salinity and potential jump of 0.2 in pH along with essentially no temperature adjustment, but I know people here's somewhere by acclimating in different ways. This wasn't really on my part. I didn't do the acclimation, but supposedly the fish is dead, within 5 minutes of being in the tank. I've read so many things about acclimation that I always tend to adjust my QT first and take things slow unless we're talking something I got shipped in, but is this a dangerous move? The fishing reference is an aiptasia eating file fish

 

[KrisReef]

If the fish dies, it was a dangerous move.

 

[EricR]

Are there other fish staying in QT that you want at that low salinity?
If not, I'd just stop topping off the QT (or top w/saltwater) until evaporation brings it up to 1.024 to match your DT.

 

[Treehrtsme]

Wasn't necessarily my move, I made someone aware of the situation. The fish had been in a quarantine after doing its job taking care of pests. At this point it wasn't really a quarantine system that I was running it was more of a separate tank that I was keeping access macro in but it was the only fish in the tank and the parameters were heavily monitored. The system it came from was also fairly low nutrient about 2 years established with only three fish in it at the time. 40 gallons low bio load. I normally keep what was my QT at a lower salinity for buying fish that are often kept at stores in tanks running 1.020 and such. I have trouble reading a refractometer (vision and glasses) so I always use two hydrometers and a digital Milwaukee to test salinity. Gave the fish to someone else because I know longer had any aiptasia and the fish had been perfectly healthy active and eating for at least two months. Bagged it up and gave it to them making them aware of the parameters I took immediately before and get a text 15 minutes later saying they think it's dead. To my knowledge it was dripped for 15 minutes and tossed into a reef system with SPS only which fro. my experience working at lfs is a very different kind of tank than the one you would hold fish only in.

I was just questioning myself for a moment there. I know sudden shock can kill a fish but I've had fish before who have been in my tank for a week appearing dead 90% of the time that either make it through or pass, but I've never had a fish die in the same day let alone an hour or two, unless it was something that I received in bad condition. I'd assumed that the acclimation would have gone differently as I would have done it much differently but then again I know that in cases acclamations need to be done quicker due to ammonia toxicity. this shouldn't be one of those cases though. Now in about 3 hours apparently the fish has been confirmed dead and been discarded and I'm starting to wonder if there was something wrong with my tank because I know that a 20 to 30 minute drip acclamation and temperature acclimation can be sufficient. I suppose I didn't stop to think to tell someone how to acclimate. I didn't know the fish was going to go straight into a very high flow full strength salinity SPS system so my first guess is shock could have killed it just from the initial stress of being moved and all the other factors, but I would never give or sell an unhealthy fish to someone else. Personally I like the fish. It had a good personality but I had other plans for that tank and figured I'd pass it around the local community. Also tonight I've been in contact for a week with this person I'm starting to think perhaps I should have asked more questions about what they were going to do with it. My personal opinion is that that was a terrible way to acclimate it and it should have gone into a small QT of some sort just to get the salinity up, but I'm not a marine biologist, things don't always go right for me. Is it possible that after being in a low salinity system for a long time it just becomes much harder for the fish you adapt to hire salinity or perhaps my tank parameters or something wrong with my water could have triggered some sort of sudden death in the fish?

I don't know just a little bit sad about this one cuz the little guy had a lot of personality

 

[Treehrtsme]

I don't want to come across as accusing someone of doing a bad job handling a fish or anything. I've worked at a store before where we used only API test kits and did some stuff that I would never personally do but I had the best reef systems in town and a lot of high-dollar fish. I would have thought the file fish would be very Hardy too. It was a biota captive raised