Red Sea DipX 500ml

New corals often come with pests hidden in their crevices. These varied small creatures are often invisible to the naked eye and, once introduced, can spread to other corals and damage your fragile reef ecosystem.

Year after year, reef keepers have used generic bath solutions such as fresh water, iodine, and even household disinfectants. This scares away some pests, but not all.

In recent years, we have maintained tanks full of infested corals in our laboratory and compared a wide range of commercially available dips and other solutions, evaluating their effectiveness and coral safety.

The result is DipX – a unique blend of essential oils, with no inorganic disinfectants. Our tests have shown that DipX is absolutely safe for all types of corals and more effective than any other solution tested.

Corals dipped in DipX, after having been previously dipped in other solutions, still released pests. Conversely, corals that had been dipped in other solutions, after having been dipped in DipX, released nothing at all.

Why do corals carry pests?

In nature, many species of small invertebrates associated with corals find refuge in corals and live rock and are collectively referred to as "opportunistic occupants." The most common groups of these opportunistic occupants include crustaceans, helminths (worms), echinoderms, nudibranchs, and snails. In most cases, the occupants benefit from their host without harming it, and in other cases (e.g., acropora trapeze crabs), both the host and the occupant benefit from the relationship. However, there are several occupants that can harm their host by feeding on it. In their natural habitat, these opportunistic occupants are relatively few in number due to the lack of nutrients and natural predators. When corals are transferred from one environment to another, the opportunistic occupants remain on their host, becoming unwanted hitchhikers.

 Usage:

• Pour DipX into a clean, dry, empty container.
• Use 10ml of DipX (diluted 1:100 with aquarium water) to prepare 1L of dipping solution.
• Dip your new coral or live rock for a maximum of 15 minutes.
• The solution can be reused for up to 4 dips but must be discarded within 2 hours of preparation.