When I first started in the hobby, 6 years ago, I was told to float the bag for 15 min and let the livestock out. Then I read about drip-acclimation and was told I should do it. I tried that for a while, and had a number of deaths. A few years ago, I went back to the bag float method, with no drip and haven't had any deaths since.
I have also, noticed a trend, it may be coincidence, but it seems that when people have problems with new LS, that can't be explained, by light, flow, or parameters, it is determined that acclimation was not long enough, regardless of how absurdly long it actually was. You acclimated for 2 hours, next time try 5, 5 oh, try 10, 10 try 24, 24 try a month (okay, I'm exaggerating now
).
My thought is that this increased duration of acclimation, actually is a vicious cycle.
When you transport LS, the production of CO2, converts the ammonia, that will be produced, to ammonium. If you add water, to this contaminated water, you are raising the pH and causing the ammonium shifts to the more toxic ammonia. When you go for longer you are prolonging the exposure to ammonia and increasing the toxins effect. My thought is therefore – get the fish out of that garbage water ASAP.
Thoughts?
Also, I'm interested in other ideas to explain my observation, other than coincidence – I certainly realize this is possible and am not making recommendation, just trying to understand the process.