AccuDrip - Acclimating Fish Made Easy

Recently I tried out the AccuDrip Acclimation Kit by Innovative Marine. The AccuDrip makes acclimating fish easy and error free with a self-priming siphon bulb that doubles as a drip counter and a curved rigid tube that easily hangs on your aquarium. It has been out for a while now but I have been waiting for a true test to check out the one I received from IM. So when I bought a Bongo Shrimp last week, it was time for the AccuDrip. Proper acclimation is critical with many invertebrates and I did not want to screw this one up as rare Bongo shrimp are expensive. Check out the 1 minute install and AccuDrip review below.





After removing my AccuDrip from the package, nothing more than a quick glance over the instructions was needed to get my acclimation started as it came fully assembled. I simply hung the curved end over the lip of my tank, squeezed the siphon bulb and adjusted the drip with roller clamp. The ease of this struck me and made me recollect all the fish bags I floated and dipped directly in my aquarium over the years, many of which would get snagged on coral or rock.



I set the drip at 1 drop per second as stated in the instructions for inverts.

Here are the full instructions:

It took about 25 minutes to triple the water volume at 1 drip per second in my case. Toward the end, my Bongo shrimp became animated - seemingly giving me the signal that successful acclimation was achieved. I then released my shrimp into the aquarium. It did a little dance and then disappeared into the rock wall where it now lives to my chagrin.

Regardless, Innovate Marine's AccuDrip proved to be a nice tool to have for acclimation of your fish, coral and invertebrates. So what's not to love? Well, the price. At $20, many will pass by the AccuDrip. I completely understand this as you could create your own with a knotted piece of air-line tubing. But will yours be as accurate, sanitary and safe? Probably not. And when you are spending big money on that beautiful fish from the Red Sea or, in my case, a fairly rare shrimp, I think the AccuDrip will begin to pay for itself with mistake-free acclimation. For life-long insurance, $20 may not actually be that bad after all.




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Great review and great little product! I tried one and found it easy enough to use that I actually started doing a proper acclimation, which I was never very good about doing beforehand. I suggest running some ro/di through it before storing.

 

Very cool...might have to pick one of these up. Thanks Matt!

 

Looks great, however,

What am I doing so wrong?

If I get verts, I put like 30-50 % more water they came in, from my DT in the water . Wait a bit- 10-15min. maybe, and dump em in! They cruise off

For fish, I usually QT, but use a similar method, nobodys acted ill or died from it.

**Disclaimer- don't try this at home! he he

 

Definitely looks a lot more convenient than my "tie a knot in airline and loosen until I get a constant drip" method. It would be nice if they added some sort of clamp at the bottom so the airline can be secured to the side of the bucket (or beer mug!).

 

Looks similar to IV tubing.

 

awesome little product.

However I'm more interested in this shrimp you got. any pics?

 

Very cool, I thought of something like this when I first started Reefing. I was going to take some Medical "IV" tubing and use that for acclimation.

But for 20.00 this saves you the hassle of finding some medical equipment laying around

 

I use my Acclimate (from Reef Gently) box to do the same, however this seems to be actually easier to setup and use. If you don't use an acclimation box, I would definitely recommend using this!

Keep in mind the things to check before releasing fish or inverts into the tank are that temp, pH and salinity all match (or very close). Too slow of a drip in a cold or hot environment and this can cause the temp and/or pH to be significantly different. Just a word of caution.

 

Having family in the nursing field, I've thought about marketing the drip counter and slide control valve on IV systems for use as an acclimating tool. Seeing this thread makes me wish I would have done it. I've secretly been using this for years now and mine was free. For less than twenty you can go and buy the tubing, drip counter and slide/roll crimp at any medical supply store.