freshwater dipping

[phlipper84]

I have a question, and someone told me there are no stupid questions, only dumb answers! I am looking to freshwater dip some new ricordias, just making sure there are no unwanted guests hanging about. However, I am not really sure how to go about it. Any help greatly apprecated.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I've never freshwater dipped anything except macroalgae to kill flatworms, so I can't say much about it for corals. The only thing I'd suggest is that it be fairly short, to have the fresh water be pure and not tap water, and not have it too cold.

Anyone who does dips want to chime in?

 

[phlipper84]

I am concerned with possible zoo-eating nudis. Trying to take every precaution.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Well, that makes sense.

Anyone have any otehr dipping advice?

 

[psimitry]

Having dipped in FW for Zoo eating Nudi's, I will say this - do NOT dip mixed rock (i.e. rocks with multiple types of coral other than zoos) in FW.

I lost several colonies of Xenia before I found out how sensetive they are to FW.

Also - in the "rinse and shake" part of Mucho's Zoo dip, don't do this on mixed rock that has fleshy, "breakable" coral on it (i.e. big mushrooms, all SPS, and the aforementioned Xenia).

Edit: however, it should be noted that after a while of my trying everything and anything to get rid of these little punks, I eventually said "to hell with it," and fragged off a few "Hail Mary" frags that I put into a QT tank, let the nudi infection go for as long as it wanted, and let the nudis die off naturally. I then reintroduced my zoos.

This obviously would not be an acceptable solution if your tank is heavily grown over with Zoos (I think I had like 5 colonies with 20-30 polyps each - they were pretty new).

Now I always examine my new Zoos thoroughly and dip before they go into QT. Then I dip them again before they go into the tank.

 

[HowardW]

Not really relevant to ricordias, but my only experience with a freshwater dip was with a medium picasso trigger. He had a few odd looking parasites or small cysts or something and I was told that a 5 minute freshwater dip might be a good alternative to medications. I cautiously tried it making sure the temp and Ph were as close as possible and it really seemed to work very well. All the tiny parasites fell off in the freshwater and the trigger didn't seem to get stressed out at all, in fact, he was gobbling down some frozen sea urchin within 10 minutes of being back in the tank!!