Acclimation failure

Let's say I get a new fish from the LFS, and then do a poor job acclimating
it to my tank, perhaps too fast or something. What kind of behavior should
I expect?

I recently got a small (ocellaris) clown, and unfortunately was a little rushed
when I got it home. Seemed fine the first 48 hours (eating, good color),
although unfortunately my existing clowns were bothering and nipping at it.
Then, this morning, it was swimming on the bottom of the tank near the sand
(instead of in the open water), the top half looked kind of grey, and it didn't
eat during the morning feeding. By the afternoon, it was dead.

Is there any chance this was an acclimation error on my part? Could it take
that long to manifest the symptoms? Or, if you do a bad job with acclimation,
should you expect noticeable problems within the first 24 hours?

I'm trying to figure out whether I made a mistake, or whether I was simply
unlucky to import a fish that already had problems.

Curious about the experiences of the rest of you...

-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis don@xxxxxxxxxx http://reef.geddis.org/
Sometimes I think I'd be better off dead. No, wait. Not me, you.
-- Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey
.

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