Plant Cleaning Question

[nathan515]

Was wondering, what can you use to destroy everything in a tank...parasite...worms...snails...pests....etc in a tank EXCEPT the plants? Is there any sort of chemical/product that does this? Thanks.

[Dangerdoll]

are there fish in the tank? All these things you have listed are indications of overfeeding. If you fed less and continued with your water maintenance schedule, things would clear up... I don't particularly "like" adding chemicals to the tank to kill things off and it just doesn't make much sense to me.... kills off these but is harmless to these? the equation seems all wrong.

[nathan515]

No I'm saying that...for example...you mess up on a tank...and you know your tank is infested with "unwanted pests" so you move all the creatures you like out of the tank and you put the chemical into the tank to kill everything unwanted and clean the substrate and plants of every living thing in it so you can start over and add your creatures back into the tank AFTER cleaning it of the chemicals and start anew?

[hondaman]

Well im not sure what you want to kill but hell to kill off worms and inverts u can all ways use an algaecide such as No More Algae. That pretty much cleaned up my worm and snail problem about 6 months ago.

My tank wasnt planted then though. I have read on here how to clean off plants using bleach, cold water, hot water, and soaps. You might want to check in on those.

But, if you want to do a full tear down. Take out the plants and creatures you do want. Add Bleach, either real hot, or real cold water, and scrub.

This is at least how I would think to do it based off what I have read on here.

[Walker_]

ya, bleach is the most failsafe way.... just a lot of work, if you are having issues with pests... there may be other ways to deal with them, IE proper feeding, UV steralization, all tanks have the seeds for "pests" its just the conditions that are prevelant that allow them to get to plauge proportions