WEEKLY DISCUSSION : To dip or not to dip?

[jman785]

Have you ever had to dip a fish or a coral?
>Why?

Did you use a freshwater dip, or something such as Lugol's?
>Why did you choose this dip method?

How long did you dip the specimen for?

How well did the dipping work for you?





This is a weekly discussion, and will be added to a weekly discussion archive

[winnona15]

I chose to do a fresh water dip because i didnt have a QT tank at the tim but i did the dip in 1 gallon RO fresh and 2cups tank water. i kept the fish in there for about 8 min before removing it and putting it back into the main tank. when it first get placed in the dip it may be disoreinted but thats normal. the freshwater dip is effective because the ich parasites and others canot live in a fresh water or low salinity habitat. thats another reason i chose to do a freshwater dip.

[malkore]

because I didn't have a QT tank up, I dipped my last 2 fish. Actually, I did a drip acclimation into a bucket, and once it was half done, I added 3x the normal dosage of OrganiCure medication. after 30 mins more acclimation, I netted the fish and put it in the display tank.

Both these fish have been doing well. One is too recent a purchase to say 'oh he's fine' but the 6 line wrasse has been in the tank almost 3 weeks and is very active.

[Mongoose]

I choose to dip my Kole Tang when I was new to the hobby. He had parisites that were irritating him and at the time I thought it was my last resort. Knowing what i do now I wouldn't dip another tang ever. However it did work, I diped him two times in two days for about 3 minutes. All the parisites died and he was to this day the best looking most colorful Kole Tang I've seen. I just diped in tap water :shock: (stupid me) Like I said I was new to the hobby then.

[Frick-n-Frags]

I have a very small fishload(a royal gramma and a spotted hawk in two separate 50 gal tanks with a lot of plumbing in between).

IF (big if :D) I get another fish, I have no reason to quarantine or dip it as the host population is too scarce for fish parasites and there are too many filterfeeders which munch little zooplankton kinds of stuff.

But I would dip a fish that had something that would be killed by FW dipping.

Regarding corals. no way. My game is to minimize stress and corals are fairly undifferentiated cellular level stuff that IMO suffers almost as much from osmotic/chemical imbalance shock as the single celled crap that is trying to be killed. A fish is a whole 'nother waay more advanced form of life that can take the stress of a dip.

[BoldAsBrass]

I dipped once on a box fish, and he didn't make it. I decided to concentrate on corals. It's easier than wanting a life insurance policy on each fish ;-)

I tried a freshwater dip on a Copperband once. One of my first fish (luckily he was eating well before I got him) and he got ich. I used treaded tap water (not advocating the use of tap water), made sure it was at the same temp and left him in for about 3min at a time. He made it through and the FW dip cured the ich so IMO it was a success. Luckily that is my one and only experience with ich... "knock on wood".

After my last expeariance with RTN I am going to start dipping new sps corals in Lugol's before introducing them. I have read a lot of good reports from Lugol's.

[bigfoot]

i havent ever dipped anything but just remember that its not the fresh water thats going to mess with them its the drop in the PH! going from 8.3-7.8 then dropping down to 6-7 it messes them up pretty good guy at work who breeds about 50 types of fish says he uses ph up to get the water where it needs to be and then elongates dips to 6-10 minutes

[jman785]

Its not only the pH, its the Salinity also, that kills the critters, they go into Osmotic Shock and die most of the time.

[bigfoot]

yup dont dip qt!

[jman785]

Well if you read some of the information that TerryB has posted here, you'll find that freshwater dips, are some of the best methods of removing parasites. If you look at some of his articles on Ich, you'll see what I'm talking about...I quoted a few of his articles here on Coral Forum, if you can find them.

[marshalrckman]

I did a FW dip on 2 of my fish.
I used a 2 gal bucket with RO water with a really low salinity and buffered the ph to the right level and kept them in there for about 1 minute and the parasites were gone shortly after and they look so much better.The ich went bye bye

[BigBill]

no dipping for me... I use QT

[coral_diver]

I have done a FW dip on several fish I had, ocellaris, clarki, hippo tang, royal gramma, pygme angle, not sure what else mostly for ick prior to putting in main display all made it I usually dip until the fish looks like it is starting to stress heavily or until the ick has dropped off the fish.

I have also done a lugulo's solution dip on a gonoipora sp? and green open brain, I followed instructions for the dip on the bottle. The gonoipora I diped for the reason that it was waisting away after about a year and a half or so and the brain had damaged tissue in one small area. neither survived long term the brain went down quickly and the goinopora lasted another few months I had thought it had stopped waisting but then it started again. I have it on good authority that when they start waisting to feed DT's now? Someone I know managed to bring one back when it was almost gone with frozen DT's.