Freshwater dips

[MMAX]

Just gave my clown a freshwater dip to take care of some parasites on his bottom lip. I think it's some kind of copopod problem. Have any of you ever erradicated parasites from your live rock by giving them freshwater dips and if so what will happen?

[Keri]

Copepods are not a parasite (There are however parsitic isopods - look them up, but they are a lot bigger than copepods)
Freshwater dips will effectively kill your live rock, I wouldn't suggest it.

Can you post a picture of the "pods" on your fish?


See below for the fish's lovely parasitic isopd "hat"

Image stolen randomly from google image search.

[MMAX]

If it's an isopod, I still want to get rid of it by giving a freshwater dip to all my rocks. I knew they would die (I'm going to lose my fan worms) but, what I was wondering was that if I did that, will the parasites die too? I have a
20 gal and I don't want to medicate it. I wanna try that first.

[Keri]

It's not the fan worms i would be worried about killing, it's the beneficial bacteria that make your live rock worth $5 - 7 or more a LB. Your LR will lose this bacteria and it won't be filtering your tank anymore....plus you're going to have a big ammonia spike from the die off....if you FW dip your rocks are you going to FW dip the sand as well? There are "bugs" in there too! No, FW dipping the rock isn't the answer....what do the bugs look like? Was it actually feeding off of your fish? Did it come off in the FW dip you gave your fish?

[Megalodon]

Originally Posted by MMAX

If it's an isopod, I still want to get rid of it by giving a freshwater dip to all my rocks. I knew they would die (I'm going to lose my fan worms) but, what I was wondering was that if I did that, will the parasites die too? I have a
20 gal and I don't want to medicate it. I wanna try that first.

No, don't do it.

[Keri]

If the clown is the only fish in the tank you're better off medicating it in a QT and letting the Dt lay "fallow" for 8 weeks or more to kill off any parasites there.

[Myka]

Dip the slown, but don't dip the rock.

[Aquattro]

It's really easy to catch all the isopods, if that's what you've got. I used a small narrow necked vase, put some scallop in it and put it in the tank at night. Every 30 minutes I removed it and emptied out the isopods. After a few times, I had them all and never saw another on my fish. Do not FW dip your rock.

[MMAX]

Here's the best I can do with my camera. If you want, zoom in so you can see it better.

[Aquattro]

zooming doesn't help, but to me it looks like a white fuzzy mass? Is that correct?