DIY shrimp drip acclimate tool

Getting new shrimps is always very exciting (ofcourse put the cost topic aside). It can be very rewarding when you see the new shrimps scavenging happily in your tank. But patient is always needed when introducing the new shrimps to the tank. They can't be happy if you just put them directly into the new tank without acclimating them. 

Acclimating Shrimps

Although the water just look alike, water that come with the shrimps has different water parameter (content) and temperature compare to the water in your tank. Water is the environment that shrimps live in, so, to adapt to its' new environment, shrimps need to slowly adjusting itself to suite the new environment. Sudden change to new environment can lead to shock and even death to the shrimps. Sometime it take time for the shrimps to death if the shrimps is not acclimating well.

The acclimation I used to practise is for every 10 minutes introducing some new tank water to the original water that come with shrimps. Each time, around  10% to 15% of the water volume (considering original water volume is 100%) is introduced. After 2-3 hours, the water volume will become 200%-300% of the original water, then, I only take up the shrimps and introduce the shrimps to my new tank. From my experience, the shrimps are doing good in the new tank with this style of acclimating but my only complain is I needed to pour some water in for every 10 minutes. Thus, I decided to do a shrimp drip acclimate tool which will slowly dripping new tank water to the original water. This is a low cost and simple DIY which can be done under RM 6 (~USD 2) and less than 10 minutes setup time. Check out the equipment list and setup step as below

Equipment

1) 1 measuring cup with handle - RM3.50

2) 1 normal container - Free
3) The air pump valve - RM 0.30
4) Air pump tube - RM 1.50
5) Sucker (optional) - RM0.20

Container with handle can be easily obtained at shopping mall or baking shop. I got mine at hardware shop which the container is used to measure the water volume. The sucker, air pump valve, air pump tube can be easily obtained from local fish shop.

Proceed to read more to find out the set-up

The set-up

1) Transfer the shrimps together with water (original water come with shrimps) to the measuring cup

2) Hang the measuring cup handle at the side of the tank glass. The purpose is to have the water in the measuring cup to be cool down by the tank water

3) Fill up the other container with tank water 

4) Fill up the air pump tube with the tank water.

5) Fix the air pump valve to the end of air pump tube

6) Use the sucker to fix another end or air tube to the water container that filled with tank water

7) Put the container at the higher ground than your measuring cups so that you have enough pressure to push the water through the air pump valve

8) Adjust the air pump valve to get the suitable dripping speed

9) Leave it for few hour and transfer the shrimps to the tank when the water in the measuring cups is 300% of the original volume

Summary

With this DIY drip acclimate tool, acclimating new shrimps to tank is now a less hassle.  By exercise some creativity from your brain cell, you can get a better version of DIY drip acclimate tool than mine. For the next version, I am thinking fix the air pump tube to the bottom of a container so that I can eliminate the step on filling the air pump tube with tank water (which is the most troublesome step). But, I will still use this for now until one day, I started to frustrate with the setup steps needed.