fish/coral dips and qt procedures

[DMBillies]

I wanted to start a discussion about dips and special qt procedures. As a club we are always trading/buying from one another and things can obviously get passed around. I'm interested in procedures or recipes for treatments to prevent new additions from bringing bad things to your tank. I know discussions have occured in the past, but I wanted to get something compiled with all methods in one place (we could potentially sticky this to the top of the forum for easy access or post on the mtrc website). I am posting a zoa dip below that I found on reefcentral (can't remember where) that I've used with pretty good success (definitely killed plenty of critters off the rocks and never killed a zoanthid). I tried to format this in a logical order so someone doing the procedure can go down through it easily as they are working. If you are posting a dip recipe/procedure, please try to do the same. As always, feel free to post comments about the different procedures and changes you might make... however, if you do something sifficiently different, it may be easiest to understand if you just to post up another recipe instead of trying to make a laundry list of suggestions.

[DMBillies]

This dip is supposed to work for most every ailment zoos can have (assuming you catch it in time) and can/should be used before QTing them. This dip kills off all bristle worms, nudibranchs, copepods, flatworms and parasites. It also works on many of the funguses. Some of these things are bad and some are not, but getting the bad things before they cause problems is certainly worth the trade-off.
This dip will NOT kill off any nudibranch eggs so you will have to inspect the rock after dipping for what looks like a tiny 1/8” curly white piece of thread. They won't detach from the rock as the sack is very sticky. Inside this egg sack is up to 40 or so eggs just waiting to hatch. If you see one, just remove it with tweezers before placing the rock back into your reef.

Ingredients:
5 gallon white bucket
3 gallons of RO/DI water
Lugol’s Iodine
Something to set RO/DI pH to match tank pH (about 8.2)
Optional Ingredients:
Flatworm Exit

Making the brew:
1. Add 3 gallons of RO water to white bucket.
2. Add 1 or 2 drops of Lugol's Iodine per gallon of RO water.
3. Set your PH to 8.2
4. Set your water temperature to 78 degrees
5. Add 2 drops per gallon of Flatworm Exit to the RO/DI water

Preparing the colony:
If your colony has a fungus, some preparation before the dip may be required. A lot of people are dealing with a whitish, opaque to yellowish fungus or some sort on your colonies. The key to saving a colony with this issue is to act immediately. You must remove all of the fungus with tweezers outside of your tank. Some colonies will require a bit of surgery and in some rare cases where the fungus is particularly nasty you may place drops of Lugols Iodine directly onto the infected colony (only after the surgery).
If necessary, use a very sharp razor blade, cut down and around the entire area that was affected. If you have a large rock and you want to be sure that you have eradicated the problem, remove 2 or 3 rows of good zoos around the area that was infected. Obviously, on frags, you may not want to cut any zoas. Rinse the colony well with tank water using a turkey baster or the like, in a separate bucket or sink outside of your reef, then proceed to dipping.

Dipping the colony:
Place the colony in the white bucket right side up. Leave it there for about 5 minutes. Then grab the rock and invert it and place it in the water 3 inches below the water surface. Now twist the rock as fast as you can in a clockwise and counterclockwise motion for at least a minute. Once you have finished twisting the rock in the water for a full minute, pull it out of the water and dunk it back into the water a few times, splashing and swooshing is good, it dislodges anything that didn't fall off in the twisting motion.

After the dip:
Make sure to check for nudibranch eggs that may still be attached to the colony. Once you place the colony back into your reef, make sure they receive some current as they will be a little stressed and might slime a little. The zoos should reopen in a little while. You should also only run your actinics for the rest of that day. Actinics will encourage them to open. Try not to introduce any food into the system as well, until the following day. On the following day, go back to your normal photoperiod.

[rsteagall]

There has been recent discussion about using SW instead of RO/DI. The Lugols by itself mixed with SW should be enough by itself to accomplish everything you need. A SW dip is much less stressful than RO/DI and you can dip them longer (15min-20mins) which gives more contact time with the Lugols.

I'd also like to add that if you don't have Lugol's, you can use a tincture of iodine from the drugstore. The suggested amount of tincture of iodine is 10 drops of tincture per 8oz SW Lugol's is suggested at 5 drops per 8oz SW.

With all that said, if you don't have Lugols or tincture of iodine, a straight RO/DI dip is better than nothing. I did my first dip this past weekend with Seachem Iodide, but I was told this wasn't the same stuff as Lugols or tincture. However, I did see many worms and other debris fall off the frags/colonies I dipped. I suppose it was the straight RO/DI that did this, but I'm still unsure what I was told about the Seachem Iodide.

My reference thread (http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=921862) is a conversation I had with a guy thats fairly successful keeping zoos. Please use this for confirmation of what I've said and don't divert conversation from this thread.

Also, I suggest usually making no more than a gallon of dip at a time unless you have a large colony where you actually need that much dip. Usually we're only needing to dip small frags.

I hope my contribution was helpful.

-Ryan

[cee]

That's a very weak Lugol's concentration (1-2 drops/gallon) and will take quite some time to kill stuff of in SW as Ryan points out. I usually go with about 20+ drops per bag and do it in the shipping water for like 10-15 minutes. I do this on all corals, although I do adjust the strength depending on what I'm dipping.

[DMBillies]

As Ryan points out, usually it is not necessary to make as much dip as the recipe I copied suggests. I usually use 1/2 gallon or less, and often up the concentration a bit (especially because you can't split drops). Perhaps I could get away with quite a bit higher concentration from what you guys are saying.

[rsteagall]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8103244#post8103244 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by cee
That's a very weak Lugol's concentration (1-2 drops/gallon) and will take quite some time to kill stuff of in SW as Ryan points out. I usually go with about 20+ drops per bag and do it in the shipping water for like 10-15 minutes. I do this on all corals, although I do adjust the strength depending on what I'm dipping.

Yes, the original zoo dip recipe in the zoa forum has changed quite a bit. At the rate Mr. Ugly suggested in my comments above, 5 drops per 8oz is equal to 80 drops (1 capful?) per gal of water. :P Thus again why usually you wouldn't want to make more than a gallon.

I guess the zoo dip still isn't an exact science. The goal is to rid bad things and trying to stress the zoos the least amount as possible. There appears to be quite a variation in the recipes.

I kind of hate to ask this, but I wonder if the dip can be re-used? =\

[gflat65]

I have been using Lugol's with an in the shipping bag dip for about 10 minutes for a while on zoas. Tropic Marin Pro Coral Cure (which apparently is pretty much some sort of Iodine) has been my answer for all other corals. I double or triple dose the acros, but go lighter on other corals (closer to the directions). TMPCC is a bit more expensive than Lugol's, though...

[rcmike]

So will the iodine work okay for Acros? I have some that says providone iodine 10%. Is this the right stuff?

[fish tanked]

I wouldnt use the povidone iodine 10% it has a bunch of other ingredients and only 10% of the good stuff...

[rcmike]

Thanks, the bottle doesn't mention the other ingredients so I wasn't sure if it was water or what. I didn't think it was the right stuff but I figured I would check.