Fresh Water Dip For Corals

[GrendelPrime]

i was at petco today for some food and i heard 1 of the kids talking to someone who from what i heard had nudibranchs eating his zoanthids, so the advise was to take the zoas out give them a fresh water dip for alittle while till the person was able to see the nudis start dropping off..just want some feed back about freshwater dips for coral

 

[reeferman]

buffer the fresh water and it works great for a quick dip.i wouldnt dip any longer than about 2 mins and only softies and lps,sps dont respond real well to fresh water dips.

 

[deehz]

At least for me, LPS, zoas, paly's, and softies do really well in a freshwater dip. I usually dip them for about 10-20 min and reacclimate them slowly to my tank. I have lost some very expensive SPS to this method and would not recommend this method at all. With SPS, I usually will dip them in Lugols solutions. Just my .02

 

[IamELMO]

I had a bubble coral with bristleworms in the skeleton that were eating/irritating it. I gave it a fresh water dip for no longer than 3-4 minutes. The bristleworms and about a million pods come off. For the next 2 weeks or so it looked like someone wiped a snot on a piece of rock. It's sloooooowwwly coming back now. I would recommend only dipping a healthy coral or a coral which may die without treatment (so you have nothing to lose if the dip does kill it)

 

[GrendelPrime]

now is this something u could do a number of times on the same coral if the coral is infested?

 

[deehz]

now is this something u could do a number of times on the same coral if the coral is infested?

I agree w/IamElmo. As long as the coral is healthy and a relatively good size, I think you can do a FW dip a couple of times if it is infested. I would not try it on any of the SPS species though.

 

[GrendelPrime]

roger that

 

[yvr]

I personally prefer not doing freshwater dips on my corals because of a coral's poor ability to osmoregulate, I fear that some polyps may get damaged (cell repture) duing the procedure. I do however dip all my new corals in an iodine bath like Tropic Marin Pro Coral Cure before introducing them into my tank. Understandably I get a bit paranoid about introducing things like flatworms into my display tanks. Besides preventing flatworms, I also believe that dipping a new coral in an iodine solution helps it recover from the stress of transport and reduces the chance of microbial/bacterial infection on the new coral.

 

[GrendelPrime]

if u had an iodine supplement would u use it full strength or dilute it with water?

 

[Rhodes19]

:lurk:

 

[ALreefer]

Not trying to steal the thread but I am curious. Those who do a freshwater dip or any other dip... is this done instead of quarantine, or in addition to quarantine? Most of the coral tanks at my LFS have at least one fish in it (usually a tang to keep algae in check) so I worry about ich and other bad stuff being transported in the coral.

 

[GrendelPrime]

good question

 

[ChrisOaty]

I started dipping coral with Brightwell's MediCoral as soon as I get any new additions home. Then acclimation to my tank. The dip will take care of parasites and infections as well as relieve stress from environmental swings during transportation and acclimation. As for fish, any dip will not replace a good quarantine.

 

[brandon]

Dips do not replace qt for fish and corals. Dips are used to eliminate or reduce the chance of hitch hikers in your tanks. Once bad hitch hikers are in your dt it can be very difficult to eradicate that species back out of the tank.

 

[dmatt88]

Does coral rx eliminate ich?

........milli's hate me.