Freshwater Dip. Good or Bad?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

ryshark

Aquarium Advice Addict
Joined
Jul 25, 2007
Messages
1,649
Location
Southern California
Has anybody had any luck with doing a freshwater dip? Or does it just seem to stress the fish out to death? I was going to do one yesterday, but after hearing Melosu's experiece with it, I decided not too. I would like to hear other people experiences with it too. Thank you.
 
A lot of the poeple that I talk to do not do FW dips of their fish. It tends to stress them too much. I don't do it with my fish.
 
I just finished a hyposalinity treatment in my 10gallon QT with 2-small clowns and a 3" regal tang. I did this because the tang had ich all over it. I slowly brought the SG back up and I saw two small white spots on the tang. I have been battling nitrites for the past 8-weeks because of such a small hospital tank. So my plan is to freshwater dip the 2-clowns and then put them back into the fallow main tank. The clowns look fine and have never ever had signs of ich. Then maybe I could get a handle on the water parameters in my hospital tank and reassess what Im going to do with my tang. Right now I am going to leave the tang in there for another week or so to see what happens.
If anybody thinks this is a good idea, how do I go about taking the clowns from the QT to the freshwater dip to the main tank. What kind of acclimating since the QT and the main have different water now??
or
If this is a bad idea let me know too.
Thanks for the responses.
 
I would certainly hold off on the FW dip...it is an out-dated Tx method and the hard exoskeleton on the ick parasite helps to protect it from the dip. For the amount of time a FW dips takes, it really does nothing to kill the parasite and only serves to stress the fish. I would keep up on the water changes in the QT tank. Wait a week and see if the clowns are still doing okay. Then introduce them back to the main. I would still wait at least 4-6 weeks on the hippo if it is still symptomatic.
 
You have taken the time to hypo and it partially worked so be patient and take more time to hypo or use Chloroquine. Why risk adding any fish to a main system that has been in contact with crypt? If water quality is a problem then larger and/or more frequent water changes are in order.
 
Chloroquine diphosphate is an old drug currently being revised for effective dosing by many professional aquariums and laboratories. It is effective in killing protozoans (not tomont division, but does kills dinosphores upon encystment). It is non-toxic to fish including elasmobranches, but is not to be used with invertebrates and may disrupt biofiltration; however, being non-toxic to even sensitive fish shows promise over copper. Obviously, any and all medication should be dosed in a separate quarantine because of possible biological implications.
 
I am having trouble finding that stuff at my LFSs, does it go by another name too, like a brand name? Or do you know of a good place to buy it online?
 
Back
Top Bottom