Acclimation

[c0mf0rt]

I don't have a quarantine tank. I know I should burn in ****

But..... I've been reading about dips and how to do those.... my question is this....

Due I acclimate the fish in my tank (temp) and then slowly add tank water and then do the dip and back to the main tank or what???? I'm kinda confused on the timing of all of this. It seems as if you do a dip and then place them in the main thank; this negates anything you would do by acclimating them with tank water????????????? I'm confused. Please help.

[Edmonton Eskimo]

If you are trying to use dips in place of a qt then you will be dissapointed. Freshwater dips will only remove some external parasites and will not deal with any diseases that are present.

[Sam]

I use a dip routinely for all new stock (fish). I also use Methylene blue in my dip water as a treatment for external parasites. It is very safe for all fish types and has the added benefit of being high in dissolved oxygen to help with fish stress, plus it is very dark, so this also offers some comfort to the livestock. This is my procedure:

Make sure your QT is up, running and ready to go.

1] In separate bucket (use a bucket dedicated to this purpose) collect about 1G of Purified water (you can use de-chlorinated tap water for this).

2] Using a thermometer and small heater, stabilize the water to QT temperature

3] Add an airstone from a small airpump to the water and adjust with sir-gang valve, small aeration flow.

4] Go through the temperature acclimation and water changes as usual to the shipping water (i.e. float bag in QT to acclimate, add small amounts of water etc)

5] Once acclimation is complete, I use a separate empty bucket and then empty the livestock into a hatching container sitting in the bucket. This is a smallish plastic cage with slats and holes in it for the water to circulate through, but will contain the fish.

6] Add methylene blue as per instructions to the FW dip. It will get very dark, be careful, it will stain, so either wear gloves, or deal with the bluish tint for a day or so.

7] I then pick up the hatching container with the fish, drain out the water and quickly transfer the container into the FW dip solution. Depending on the fish type (prone to jumping), I cover the container (you can buy these with covers).

I let it sit in the dip for about 10 minutes occasionally moving the container around to help circulation. I strongly recommend using the container, as you cannot see the fish in the methylene blue mix, it is so dark blue. I also check to be sure that the fish does not look unusually stressed out (lying on the side at the bottom of the container etc.) You will notice that the fish may act kinda drunk and lethargic and that is normal, but if it stops moving all together and stays on the bottom on its side, I terminate the dip.

8] When I am ready to transfer, I bring up the container, hold over a shallow container and then quickly transfer the fish to the QT.

So far I have been lucky to not have a single instance of any parasitic or other disease problems with my stock. Cannot say 100% due to the treatment but the best information I have read is that a combination of a FW dip and the QT procedure considerably reduces the chances of introducting any undesirables into your main tank. HTH 8)

[c0mf0rt]

Thanks for the help. That's exactly what I needed to know.

[quarryshark]

Just to play devils advocate, I feel after catching a fish, moving it to a little bag and transferring it home that a dip is a pretty stressful event.
A simple acclimation to a qt tank is a much better avenue IMO. You can treat any ailment there very easily, without stressing them animal further. I have done dips without any major problems (in the past), but have found that they are really not a cure for disease. They may give relief to a parasitic infected fish or useful when you need to do a formalin treatment, but I would not use them routinely on seemingly healthy animals.