Do I need to quarantine soft corals?

[Alex Bonanno]

Hello everyone,

I’m new to corals and wanted to pick up a few softies to try out. I usually quarantine my fish but not my inverts. What is everyones quarantine protocol for soft corals? I heard I could just dip them? What does that mean and what should I dip them in?

Thank you advance!

 

[lapin]

You can use a coral dip. Coral RX is a popular one. Some people use the insecticide made by Bayer. You make a batch then place the coral in the solution. Stir it around, brush off the base and swish the coral around. You want to remove any unwanted worms and bugs that might invade your tank. After 5 min you rinse in fresh salt water.

 

[Smo]

Unfortunately, coral dip won’t prevent some of the more common fish parasites from sneaking in. Therefore a safe protocol includes quarantine of all coral frags in a fishless QT for at least 76 days.

 

[Alex Bonanno]

Unfortunately, coral dip won’t prevent some of the more common fish parasites from sneaking in. Therefore a safe protocol includes quarantine of all coral frags in a fishless QT for at least 76 days.

I didn’t know fish parasites can come on coral frags. Are there any treatments for the corals? Or do you just have to wait it out?

 

[Smo]

I didn’t know fish parasites can come on coral frags. Are there any treatments for the corals? Or do you just have to wait it out?

There are no treatments that won’t kill the coral as well. You have to wait it out for at least 76 days. See below thread for some great info.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/coral-invert-quarantine-time-frames.334584/

 

[mfinn]

While I do quarantine my fish, the only softies I've ever quarantined were zoanthids when I had a dedicated zoanthid tank.
My 240 is now all softies and fish and only the fish were quarantined in it.

 

[Smo]

Even “softies” have sufficient skeletal structure for tomonts to encyst to. In the case of zoas—frag plugs provide a hard surface. So basically—anything wet needs to be quarantined, especially considering all the potential risks in the global supply chain. See the above link for a great discussion of this topic.

 

[AquaLogic]

I generally remove Zoa's (and all soft corals) from frag plugs. That's about 3 seconds with a scalpel. But I only run small systems without expensive livestock. 76 days is just too long for me, for the systems I run.