Why not freshwater dip SPS. :(

[Fly Guy]

Ive freshwater dipped a few sps before with no real negative effects.......but check this out.

I treated my tank with Interdeptor last week and tried to save a few acrocrabs......so i FW dipped a couple corals in an effort to get them to jump so i could save them. Well it worked......BUT

The first pic is from a few weeks ago......the second pic was from yesterday.......sucked the color right out and turned him brown. Doesnt look like it hurt it other than color. But it toasted the color for a while anyway......

[Wiskey]

Woh,.. that's a dramatic color shift. I've always heard that FW dipping SPS kills them,.. I didn't know you could do it at all.

Whiskey

[Tim224DT]

Yeah that is a big color change!!

[hng]

I've read that FW dips kill sps as well. That is a very dramatic color change. I hope the corals make it!

[Fly Guy]

The coral is fine.....just browned out overnight.

I have FW dipped a few times in the past, primarily back when i was having fun playing with some aefw's.

Its never killed anything nor has it done anything like this.

All i wanted to do was save the darn crab.

[salt-rookie]

I dip my incoming SPS colony/frags for three hours in an Interceptor dip....

[Fly Guy]

3 hours isnt long enough for interceptor. Youd be better off with 15-20 minutes of tmpcc

Interceptor is great because it can be used in a loaded system fairly safely, but for a out of tank dip with nothing but a bucket with corals in it you might as well hit em hard with something that kills them and kills them fast.

Red bugs are a walk in the park in comparison to aefw's, and interceptor does nothing to them, tmpcc, as well as a few other products will kill red bugs and aefw's. It wont kill aefw eggs of course....you have to visually inspect for those


ps- this coral i started this thread about is coloring back up fine

[abigtroutt]

I dip mine in the Kent Tech D before placing in the tank

[salt-rookie]

Fly....what is the acronym tmpcc???

[Fly Guy]

Tropic marine pro coral cure : )

[salt-rookie]

Thanks Fly....what are the active ingredients?

[Fly Guy]

Originally Posted by salt-rookie

Thanks Fly....what are the active ingredients?

Honestly im not sure. Mostly iodine no doubt as it smells and looks like iodine.

[tdwyatt]

I use milbimycin (Interceptor) to pretreat and to quarantine for three weeks as the only prophy treatment for stony corals.

I have found over time that trying FW for most corals just after shipping is usually very tough on them if not lethal outright. Although reef top species of stony corals are potentially exposed to heavy tropical rain twice a day in the wild, FW dips after the coral has been shipped for 2 days across the Pacific, then at least another 24 hrs in a plastic bag is pretty much asking for it. I try not to make it any harder for corals going into my systems than is absolutely necessary. Although fresh water on corals in the wild under conditions they've evolved to fit is relatively harmless, FW immersion is definitely a big energy expenditure for captive corals, if for no other reason than the amount of protein and CHO it takes to make the protective mucus these corals produce as a response. We are still working on matching our captive conditions to those in the wild for corals, so until we can get the ideals for water quality, light, photoperiod and feeding, I think I'll avoid doing FW dips for corals, especially after 24 to 48 hrs in a bag. You can only squeeze just so much out of a coral...

[Fly Guy]

Thanks Tom.

However, the whole point of this freshwater dip this thread was about was trying to save a acrocrab before doing an interceptor treatment on the whole system. It wasnt FW dipping a new arrival, it was one that had been in the tank for months.......regardless of how bad of an idea it may have been, it was an effort to save one silly little crab...NOT treating a new arrival..........lol

The coral is fine and coloring up again however.

[tdwyatt]

Originally Posted by Fly Guy

...it was an effort to save one silly little crab...NOT treating a new arrival... ...lol

it's this late night, "I can't go to sleep since the time change" stuff...


Heh, never a bad idea to save even a single crab.

Just as a reference for the future should the same situation come up, usually you'll be able to turn a specimen upside down over a pan of seawater and ignore it for a bit, the crab will almost always drop out of the colony and into the pan (but not always, remember that some of these crabs will sit out with the colony at low tide). Simply suspend the colony by the base over the pan.

...and you can usually forget pulling them out with a pair of forcepts, you might be surprised how tenaceous their grip on the colony actually is... (don't ask how I know this)