[Myka]

Many years ago I used Lugol's solution to make my own iodine dip, and I lost many LPS corals doing this. LPS can be quite sensitive to dips. Buy a premixed dip. I recently switched to Coral Rx, but have used Tropic Marin Coral Cure and Julian Sprung's TLF ReVive Coral Cleaner in the past. As well as others I can't seem to think of right now. TMCC is iodine based, and ReVive and Coral Rx are not. I haven't used Coral Rx long enough to give an opinion, although the reviews are really good on it.

Dips are worth their weight in gold if you don't use a quarantine tank for corals. With no QT you rely on that dip to protect your reef from incoming infection. I don't know about you, but I have a lot of money tied up in corals, and I am not a happy camper when my reef gets infected!

For clams, freshwater dips are the only thing I would ever recommend, but I only dip clams for pinched mantle. Newly incoming clams get their mantles washed in freshwater and scrubbed with a toothbrush. Clams are usually fairly sensitive, so I don't use any sort premixed dip on them. They need at least a few days to acclimate to the tank before doing any sort of dipping, and even then I would only dip if there is a problem.