Squeee - we has tilapia!

Fish. Live Fish.
When I got the e-mail from tilapiafingerlings.com saying they would ship late last night, I went to the web to re-watch Murray Hallam's discussion about getting new fish and how to deal with them.


I carefully reviewed the instructions in the e-mail:
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Receiving and Acclimating Your Fingerlings

In order to properly acclimate your fish to their new environment you will need to follow the steps below. You should already have a tank established and ready with de-chlorinated water, proper ph, and an air stone with sufficient air bubbling through it. You will need to begin the process below immediately after receiving your fish.

1. (Thermal Acclimation) Remove inflated bag from styrofoam box and place sealed bag in receiving tank. Sealed bag should float on top of the tank for 15 minutes in order for the temperature of the water in the bag to slowly equalize with the water in the tank.
   
2. (PH Acclimation) Remove the clip on the bag and roll down the sides to make a float around the sides of the bag. Then place a bubbling air-stone inside of the bag since the sealed up oxygen will have escaped when you opened the bag. Over the course of 15 minutes, you will slowly add an additional 1.5 gallons of water from the receiving tank and pour it into the bag, in order to gradually acclimate the fish to the ph of the receiving tank.

After step 2 you will tip the bag over to let the fish escape. They will generally go straight to the bottom for a few hours until they get used to their new environment. It may take a couple of hours until they are ready to eat food

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We had one little guy who was clearly "not like the others." As in, they were swimming and he was not. Seems he got caught in a crease during shipping and suffocated. The new tilapia are significantly smaller than my goldfish, so I got a pop-up hamper to protect the tilapia. It isn't that the goldfish would eat the tilapia, but my comet goldfish liked to badger their fellow goldfish. I can only imagine the fun they'd have chasing baby tilapia - until, that is, the tilapia "stopped swimming..."

I'll post more in a few days. Hopefully the tilapia will continue to do well!