pH acclimatization

Hi Prof.

I often read that one should drip the fish with the tank water that they are going to be moved into to get equal temperatures and to allow them to 'acclimatize' to the difference in pH. However this difference is often a huge one, if only for example a 0.5 difference, in pH terms that is very large, think its a 5x increase/decrease in hydrogen ion concentration. In humans such a large and acute change in pH would probably cause death unless corrected very..very quickly.

How do the fish cope with such changes? Do they actually acclimatize to the pH or is it just the temperature?

Thanks

 

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