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When I dip, You dip, We dip

• Sep 26, 2016
• PalaciosAn
•   1246        0      0

Dipping corals, this is something you hear in the hobby. Sometimes when you buy corals you may get more than what you expected. Some hobbyist will state there corals are clean because they buy from a reputable source. Some of these pests have driven people from the hobby and reproduce quickly and can go from a small problem to a disaster before you know it.

Sometimes when you buy corals you may get more than what you expected. Some hobbyist will state there corals are clean because they buy from a reputable source. Some of these pests have driven people from the hobby and they are able to reproduce quickly and can go from a small problem to a disaster before you know it.

Depending on the hobbyist, they could be dipping their corals with a dip from a vendor who makes dips specifically for corals and some hobbyist could be using a local hardware store product which treats for lawn pest as their dip option. No matter what option you go with, it stresses the coral out, sometimes it means that the coral may look stressed for a few days or weeks and then it recovers or it could kill the coral.

I normally don't want to take the chance of losing a coral due to dipping it. The biggest pest I am normally trying to avoid acro eating flat worms. Just because I don't dip my corals does not mean that I don't do anything to try to avoid them.

When I received a new piece of SPS, regardless of the source, I have a small tank with a high powered pump in it. I grab the SPS and run it trough the high flow of the water and keep a close eye on it to see if anything flys off. If something does fly off, I would take a closer look at it. If you think the coral is infected you can quarantine it and if you don't want to quarantine then don't put it in your tank, it's not worth it. Most of the time flatworms like to hang out where the coral attaches to the plug.

I am not saying this is the best way to handle it, it's just the way I handle it. With that said Coral Typhoon has come up with a miniature coral car wash that seems to deal with pest in a similar way, in essence, there is a round frag rack that spins around, while a high power pump sprays water at the corals in different angels and the water being sucked out goes through a filter to keep the pest from flying all over the tank and attaching on another coral.

Coral Typhoon has two versions a small and a large, the small one will run you $500 and the large will cost $550 at $50 more.