baffelled on acclimatising

stevieduk · Mar 13, 2018

Anyone that has read my last couple of questions to this forum will know that after years of keeping fish and soft corals, I am finally venturing in to sps, so its like learning all over again, but one thing that happened today baffled me.
I bought my first three montiporas,about 3 weeks ago, from someone i know and trust and i know he dips all his frags so whether it was stupid or not , they were acclimated and went into the display tank , and are doing fine , so far.
But today I was at my local fish store and saw 3 corals I liked which i bought, and although I have used that shop for many years, the assistant advised me to dip the corals before adding them to the tank.
So I went home ,armed with the 3 corals , and coral dip, took the right amount of water from the tank added the chemical, and then thought, surely, taking the corals out of the bag of water they came in and putting them straight into the coral dip is severely stressing them, and then how are you supposed to acclimatise them to your tank water when they are in water that is full of chemicals. At some point they have to go into water that has not been dripped into them to equal things up.
Or is it me being stupid ?

saltyfilmfolks · Mar 13, 2018

I drip cuz it’s easy, then when the container has 50% or a little more water , I add the dip, rinse in tank water , rinse in tank water again.

(I actually have a 3.5 stage dip system though depending on the coral) Bayer , Light peroxide , revive, rinse examine.

stevieduk · Mar 13, 2018

Ah, got it, thanks , altho i hope i havnt killed them already.
We cant get your type of bayer here in the uk, the active ingredient that you have is banned here. We do have the same bottle but called total bug killer.. I rang and spoke to a bayer technician, and he had heard that it was being used for coral dipping in the U.S. but said we have to use another chemical in our bug killer that is toxic to marine life so thats a no no
Thanks for the reply anyway

saltyfilmfolks · Mar 13, 2018

Yep. I wish ours was banned.
Those were US instuctions.
Most of the other dips work, you may need to extend the time in the dip. And it’s good practice to qt.

Neither Bayer nor anything else kills eggs.

But the acclimation and dip regimine are the same.