DIY SPS Iodine (Iodide) Dip (nudi's, ect.)

I found montipora eating nudibranchs on my beloved sunset montipora one day and was FREAKING out trying to find a DIY Iodine (or Iodide) dip so I could quickly kill the buggers. Chris (chris&barb) helped point me to a site that had some info.

This ratio and time period worked great for me, your mileage may vary. All the polyps returned to about normal extension over night and mostly all of them were back to normal within 20 minutes.

I've also doubled the dosage on one frag and its polyps didn't return to normal extension until the next morning, but the frag turned out fine.

This recipe is using "Iodides Tincture (decolored Iodine) U.S.P. 45% Alcohol".


Items needed:

• Iodine Tincture from local pharmacy (Rite-Aid, Happy Harry's, ect.)
• Dropper
• Timer
• Container that can hold around 2 L (fill to 1 L)
• Smaller rinse container
• Frags to dip
• Saltwater from frags aquarium

Solution Ratio:

• 15 drops of Iodine to 1 quart (~1 liter) of tank water

Procedure (Long):
Get a bottle of Iodine Tincture from your local pharmacy (Rite-Aid), they might look at you funny
because I'm pretty sure it is an ingredient for making meth, but we won't get into that. Take a quart (about a liter) of tank water and place it into a container. Make sure your container can hold a little bit more so you don't splash it all out when putting in the frags.

Take a standard dropper and fill it with your iodine and drip in about 15-20 drips into the quart of tank water. Place your frags to be dipped into the container. I like to do them one by one and swirl them around a little to make sure the iodine solution gets in all the nooks and crannies. Start your timer for 15 minutes.

Fill another much smaller container with tank water. This is just used to rinse the frags after their dip to keep excess iodine from entering your tank. I like to wait about 5-10 minutes to do this so this containers temp is somewhere in between that of the tank and dip container, but that isn't necessary.

After 15 minutes have passed take your frags give them another swirl, move them to the rinse container, give another swirl and they are clear to go back into your tank.

Depending on the pest you are trying to rid you should also consider repeating the procedure a week later as the dip probably won't kill the eggs of the pest.

Procedure (Quick):

• Fill container with 1 quart TANK water
• Drip 15-20 drips of Iodine
• Add frags and let sit for 15 minutes
• Rinse frags in separate tank water container
• Repeat 1 week later

Feel free to play with the dip time and concentration, but the above has worked for me to kill nudibranchs and hasn't hurt the corals (as far as I can tell). I hope this helps someone out in their time of need or better yet, don't be like me, quarantine!

Good post Ian, I know I will do this on new corals from now on.