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Freshwater dip is used for the osmotic shock to parasites. It's also doing the same to the fish but you are then returning it to same water its body is adjusted to. So a short term stress that is used when needed. Change salinity in the tank abruptly, there is no relief in 5 minutes, relief only comes when they have adjusted to the change.
Also fish adjust more readily to lower salinity than raising salinity.
Be careful adding prime to the bag water, I know many people do but more suppliers are keeping low level copper in their fish tanks. If the bag has copper in it, the prime (and other ammonia neutralizers) will make the copper toxic and kill the fish.
Yes, I doubt it would be a good idea to ship fish in copper water, and this may apply more to local purchases but better safe than sorry. If you can match salinity and temp, is just get them in fresh water asap. Even if that means using a bucket to have some water that is adjusted to match the bag and acclimating from there, imoGood to know that, havent heard about this over here
I only dip if it's needed, the fish I freshwater dipped before qt I suspected flukes. I still treated with general cure but the FW dip was to try and reduce them before he went in at. Otherwise I would only dip if I suspected flukes or as part of treating a case of velvet.It just seems like you will stress them out twice if you do the dip in a day or two. Would have to catch them again and then back again.
I use a quarantine and setup the tank ahead of time with the salinity set to what the supplier tells me they are keeping the fish at.
Once I have the fish, I use a small gauge needle and syringe to puncture the bag and take a sample, use packing tape to cover hole. I then compare the salinities and match the quarantine to whatever was in the bag.
Once I float bag for temperature match, I dump as much bag water as possible and put the fish directly in quarantine with no drip acclimation.