Zoas -Preventative Dips

[jwyatt22]

I have a well established zoanthid tank and want to add new ones to it. I have read about "dips" that are used prior to introducing new ones such as Brightwell, Blue Ocean dips, and others.

My question is: How do you "dip" them? Do the products have instructions? How long do you keep them in the chemical? I see no answers here doing various searches. Any advice appreciated.

 

[DIFish]

I am new to corals and did this recently using Coral RX. Clear instructions were written on the bottle, and I think most are some variation of dip for 5-20 min while gently blowing debris off the coral or moving the water around. They all look to be pretty simple so just make sure you choose a decent well reviewed dip and you should be fine!

 

[shakacuz]

whatever "dip" brand you go with, each will bring their own set of instructions.

personally, i use coral rx, and polyp lab reef primer. one is liquid, the other, powder.

 

[jwyatt22]

Thanks for the replies!!

 

[littlebigreef]

You raise an interesting question which can quickly turn into a conversation. When receiving new frags its easy enough to do a CoralRx or a Bayer dip to knock out stuff like spiders, nudis etc. However, I've come to appreciate just how many bacterial and protozan hitch hikers can slip through and wreck havoc on a collection. Often times it might not be apparent that the frags are afflicted but then after so many weeks you start to see 'the shrivel, the wilt, color shifting to guts out.' At that point you're in trouble because stuff can bounce around for a long time- especially in a larger collection. Its for this reason, I assume, that many zoa collections top out. The solution there, though, is a protracted 5-6 QT which admittedly is a heavy lift/allocation of resources.