Disinfecting New Plants

[Roan Art]

1 part bleach 2 parts water? uh.... that would kill your plants pretty quickly. commonly people use 1 part bleach 19 parts water or 1 part bleach 25 parts water. 2 minutes then dunk in another bucket with dechlorinated water.

I hope you are fishing to see if I made a typo and not just insinuating that I am lying.

Obviously it did not kill the plants I listed because that's what I did and still do. I still have the plants. It *is* a lot harder to get that "slimey" feeling off of the leaves at that ratio, I grant that.

If you feel better going with 1:19, then by all means do so.

Roan

 

[rrkss]

Thanks for the info Roan. Just one more clarification. Do I fully emerse the plants (roots, rhizome, leaves ...) or just the leaves?

 

[Galaxie]

On my 1:20 bleach solution/ 2 minute dip:

Fatalities:
-All anacharis

Survivors:
-java fern
-banana plant
-amazon sword (damage, but recovering)
-micro sword

All of the black hair algae is gone though.
On my 2nd step, I didn't use dechlorinated water...that could have contributed to the dead anacharis, but all the other plants are good.

 

[Roan Art]

All of the black hair algae is gone though.
On my 2nd step, I didn't use dechlorinated water...that could have contributed to the dead anacharis, but all the other plants are good.

Huh, maybe that's why my massive bleach dip didn't kill the plants. I put a LOT of dechlor in the water so that the bleach would be neutralized and I kept swishing them around to get it all off.

Then I dipped them in the fresh bucket of dechlor and did the swishing thing again.

Probably what the difference was. A few of the plants looked sad for a while, but nothing died.

Either that or I just got real lucky. Dunno.

Roan

 

[EcoPit]

Wow Roan! A two minute dip in a 2:1 water:bleach mixture? I read a number of posts here where people went from a 20:1 mixture to a 25:1 mixture because the former was damaging/killing plants. I am glad it works for you, but I would be afraid to try it. As for the OP: I use a 90 second dip in a 25:1 mixture. I have seen no damage to my plants and algae and snails are completely removed (to the best of my knowledge). I am not sure about ich though. Those stromons can be tough little buggers. If that is a concern of yours then you should absolutely quarantine them. I learned my lesson in December about quarantining fish. I hate doing it, but I hated treating my display tank even more

 

[rrkss]

I have decided to QT them for 3 days just incase ich is on the plant. 3 days is enough to take care of all the ich that could be on the plant since no fish host + a temperature of 68* or higher = dead ich in 55 hours. 72 hours of QT will make the plants 100% ich free. Then a mild bleach dip to deal with velvet + algae and it will be good to go.