bleach in water?

S

spencer2009

AC Members
Oct 16, 2004
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Austin. Texas
hi everyone,
I set up an 80 gallon aquarium about 2 weeks ago. I am planning on putting malawi mbuna cichlids in it so i got some texas holey rock from by my house and pressure washed it and then soaked it in a 10% bleach solution overnight and let the rocks sit in the sun for about a week. I smelled the rocks and couldn't smell any bleach and figured it had evaporated, so i put them in the tank. They have been in there for about two weks now with gravel and the filter running and i still have not started my cycle. So i figured i could put some seeded sponge in the filter and put in a baloon molly that i have to start the cycle. After about two hours of beeing in the tank the molly just kind of stayed in one place and barely moved or anything and he is ussually very active so i took him out and put him back in his normal tank and he seems fine now. Now i think the reason he might have been that way is because there is possibly bleach in the water. Now I am worried that if I use bio spira which is what i want to do and i put a full bio load in, they might all die from bleach and i would be out $200.

thanks for the help,
Spencer
 
I would think you could use a declhorinating product made for treating tap water.

Seems to me it would neutralize any residual chloring bleach the same way it neutralizes chlorine in treated water.

You might want to do a couple of big water changes and treat it more than once to be safe.
 
It is quite possible that your molly was just stressed from the move. Were the new and tank parameters (temp, pH, hardness) the same?
 
The water in the two tanks are the same parameters at ph7.8 and temp 78. I am also thinking that the molly may have been stressed though. It really doesnt matter now because i am just going to do a fishless cycle with some amonia and a sponge out of an established tank. I dont think I will have to do water changes if dechlor removes bleach because when I first got it up and running some dust from the gravel made it cloudy, so i did a bunch of big water changes already and used dechlorinator every time i changed the water. I am about to go to walmart to pick up some amonia and start the fishless cycle.

Thanks for the help,
Spencer
 
I highly doubt that it is the bleach.

I use bleach all the time to clean tank ornaments (rocks etc...) I even do bleach dips on live plants to kill of black hair algae.

The key to bleach is a 20 to 1 solution water to bleach. Rinse well a few times and then soak in a dechlor water mix. I usually use a 5 gallon bucket with 10X the amount of dechlor. But even that is over kill 2 or 3 X is more than enough.

In your tank. Just give it a good water treatment and you are done.
 
Dechlor is kind of a safety net, but chlorine gasses off rather quickly, and even extreme levels would be gone in two weeks without any kind of treatment. I would look elsewhere. I use no dechlorinator in my tap water, and all chlorine is gone in less than 24 hours in my aging barrell. Ap does make a chlorine test kit, I find it occasionally handy with my system, it might be worth your money for peace of mind to test the tank water.
dave
 
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