[Dogbert]

This is straight from Bob Fenner's site, the URL I attached earlier. If you have problems with the link take the last period out after the htm

Unlike many I have no space or money for a dedicated QT tank so this is my best bet besides the UV and cleaner wrasse.

"Dips and extended Baths are a technique/process for (1) excluding undesirable organisms (& possibly chemicals), and (2) administering therapeutic agents (3) via a temporary immersion of livestock in a specially prepared solution". Beauty definition, eh? I just made it up. Some further explanation of the above key terms, mechanics and rationale, all right?

(1) Basically there are differential tolerances to certain semi-toxic chemical/physical environments between the "desirable" (one's we want) and "undesirable" (the opposite), hitchhiking critters and possibly chemicals that we want to include/exclude moving livestock from one system to another.

As part of this "greatest story ever told" most of this undesirable stuff is unicellular to at least not as resistant (slimy, thick, multi-cellular) as the desirables. Bacteria, Protozoans, "worms", necrotic tissue, crustaceans, and much more can be killed, impugned, sloughed off, at least reduced in number and virulence by the appropriate administration of preventative baths.

By citing "removing chemicals" as a function of these processes, I'm referring to two phenomena: A) Dilution of transport chemicals, & B.) Rinsing of surface material, e.g. fright pheromones, toxins in the example of puffer fishes, from the surfaces of the new introductions.

Are dip/bath routines really worthwhile for all the added stress, time and cost involved? Hello; well, yes...they are Standard Operating Procedures in all professional aquatic livestock collection, distribution and rearing facilities. If you have no other capacity for prophylactic quarantine, the least you should be doing are preventative dips.