I have been called a DIP so I figured I would respond.
I get new shipments of coral almost weekly. Most of these are full size colonies and things like zoas are often on large amounts of rock so could be hiding just about anything.
Everything is drip acclimated then will go into a bath of Coral RX with the exception of clams and nems. In my opinion Coral RX is very harsh and I heard many say not to use it sps. I will adjust the dip time based on my gut feeling. SPS I will dip for a for like 10-15 seconds while zoas and such on suspicious looking rock I will dip for minutes. This stuff will kill just about everything from pods, to crabs, to worms, to starfish. After the dip in Coral RX they go into a rinse dip of just tank water to get the Coral RX off of them, then they go into a QT tank for a week or so just so I can monitor things. This method works very good for me. It's not a guarantee though. Last week I found a bad crab harassing one of my millies in my DT. Where he came from or how long he had been in the tank (which must have been quite a while since I hadn't added anything new) I have no clue. But when bringing in large colonies it is much more susceptible than just frags on frag disks. Do realize that using a harsh dip such as this will really piss off your corals and they will stay closed for much longer than if they aren't used. In addition it could cause problems. Here's an example: In one shipment I got some clove polyps on a big rock. I did my RX dip and put it in the QT tank. The next day the tank reeked bad and everything was looking terrible that was in the QT tank. I pulled everything out of the tank and did the sniff test, when I got to the clove polyps it about knocked me over. What had happened was the rock was extremely porous and full of bristle worms. When I dipped it, it killed the worms but they stayed in the rock and were decaying. I had to do an emergency frag to eliminate the rock and a 100% water change on my QT system. Kept unchecked I I'm sure I would have lost everything in the QT.
Another potion I use Seachem coral disinfectant. This is a iodine based solution. In my opinion this is not something to use on incoming corals and won't really do anything to prevent unwanted hitchhikers. I use this when fragging fleshy corals such as acans, favias, chalices... After fragging I will dip them in this solution for a couple minutes to prevent infection. Fleshy corals that have a flesh issue caused from shipping or harsh handling or being stung by another coral is also a candidate for this dip to prevent further infection.
My last solution I use is a hydrogen peroxide solution. I will mix 50% hydrogen peroxide with 50% tank water and use this on zoa frags that might get a sudden attack of hair algae or bryopsis algae. This doesn't happen often but it does happen on rare occasions. I will place the frag in the solution for around a minute. Usually a week later the algae is gone. I did this on a chalice once that came in with bryopsis and it worked as well but the chalice took a lot longer to recover. This method does NOT work for everybody as I've heard people say they their zoas didn't come back after this, but I have personally never had a problem with this. On a side note I did this to a couple of frags of zoas once, and it completely changed their color from orange to blue.
No you know all of my secrets.
