How to quarantine plants?

A

Adler

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Jan 15, 2020
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Hello

I just got the following plants that I am going to add to my aquarium: Hornwort, sagittaria, mini hair grass and salvinia auriculata.

Before adding the my tank I'd like to know what is a common/easy method of quarantining plants, specially for treating potential threat to my aquarium. Right now i am reading the procedure in this site:
aquariumbreeder.com

How to Quarantine and Disinfect Aquarium Plants - Shrimp and Snail Breeder

You have to quarantine and sterilize the plants before usage regardless of how reputable the source of purchase is. These plants should be disinfected.
aquariumbreeder.com

So I'd like to know your opinion on that procedure or if you have a method of your own i would like to read it as well..

I also want ask what plants melt thanks to Flourish Excel, because i've read that vallisneria melt because of Excel and I am currently dosing my tank for algae treatment (but this thing is like steroids for plants, their growth has been amazing), so i would like to know if my sagittaria and hair grass are going to melt because of Excel too ?(sagittarias and hair grass look a lot like vallisneria)
 
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Joey just made a video on how to make plants safe for aquarium


summary: first he uses H2O2 to disinfect the plant, second he uses Kosher? salt to prevent snail infestation. what concerns me with his method is that he says (in the video) to leave the plants in both treatments for 15-20 minutes.

how else can i clean my plants of snails without using kosher salt, because right now that is very unavailable to me
 
Unless you have religious concerns, you don't need to use kosher salt. Any aquarium safe salt will do.

I personally haven't QT'd plants, but it's always a good plan to take some sort of QT steps.
 
I always use potassium permanganate, put enough in a bucket to make it a dark purple color, and leave for ±15 minutes.
 
Bleach dip has always worked for me. But I have only been using if for 18 years, so maybe I am wrong. The 19-1 ratio is what I use. However, one needs to be careful as not all plants will do well with this treatment. The ones which may suffer ill effects are generally the ones with very fine leaves. The best was to insure one doesn't do more damage than good when one is unsure if a plant will react badly is to treat a small portion and see how it does over the next few hours.

I tend to adjust the time of a dip according to how tough a plant is. Anubias I dip for a full 2 minutes while I may not even try with a plant like baby tears.

I have not used any other method besides the bleach dip, so I cannot comment on the rest of the treatments in the linked article. If I have a problem with snails (except in breeder tanks) I will add a few assassin snails to the tank and sooner or later the pest snails are gone. But I cannot imagine most snails doing well in bleach.

As for rinsing, as soon as the two minutes (or shorter dips) are done, they plant goes under running water from my tap. I have well water which has no chlorine/chlorine. To be sure, I then dip the plants in a bucket with dechlor ( I keep for when away from home with fish and I would need it then). I have both Amquel and Prime.

My best guess is that one could rinse with tap even if one has chlorine/chloramine residue as long as this is followed by a dip in a bucket with dechlorinated water.

I am not a fan of using peroxide, especially in a tank, I have killed fish that way. I also would not choose a salt dip as some plants do not like salt at all. I am also not a fan of most of the :aquarium gurus" on YouTube. As a rule, the more followers they have, the less I pay attention to them.

As always, the above is just my way, not the only way.
 
I used to bleach or peroxide plants from LFS but don't any more. I damaged or killed some. Like TTA said mostly fine leaved plants didn't do well at all. Now I rinse or soak them in tap water. I don't worry about snails much but scrape off eggs & pond snails if I notice them. I get most of my plants from my club & try hard to remove all mosses.

You can buy tissue cultured plants, they won't have snails etc. but they're a bit expensive.
 
fishorama said:
I used to bleach or peroxide plants from LFS but don't any more. I damaged or killed some. Like TTA said mostly fine leaved plants didn't do well at all. Now I rinse or soak them in tap water. I don't worry about snails much but scrape off eggs & pond snails if I notice them. I get most of my plants from my club & try hard to remove all mosses.

You can buy tissue cultured plants, they won't have snails etc. but they're a bit expensive.
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I was going to do the bleach method, but I thought it would be too much for the plants, specially for my hair grass, salvinia and sagittaria. Anyway, I used peroxide method to disinfect them and put them in my AQ right away (the plants spent a day in their bag) after procedure was done.

so F fishorama do you not disinfect your plants?

i might get more hair grass this week, they do look beautiful
 
Not really. I have chlorinated tap water to rinse off things like ich & some algae, wash off or kill some bacteria. My plant clubbers don't bring algae covered plants or from disease ridden tanks. Like I said, mosses I don't want & I did get some new to me snails but they died out.

I always warn people that I have pond snails & duckweed but tried to remove all I could. 1 tank has blackworms & when I give vals to a member to sell at a fish club I am very careful to clean them very well. But last time we met I gave some to a fellow plant clubber & said I see a couple bws in the roots I missed. He was quite excited to maybe get a colony going like mine. Different strokes...

Getting plants from a LFS or online is different than from my club. Goodness knows what might be on them & I'm more careful.

Adler, I would wait to see how the hairgrass does for you & your tank conditions before getting more. I've been disappointed with it in low tech (no co2) tanks. I remember being excited when it started to spread once, very sparsely. Then hair alga & some other kind ruined it. I tried everything to "fix" it but gave up. There's nothing wrong with trying a plant but see how it does for you before you get carried away buying more or even trying it a few times. Hornwort like cooler temps I think, or something I've never had. For some it grows like gangbusters, not for me, ever.

I wish you good luck. Don't be afraid to try almost any plant, but unless you get them free like I do, well, it can get expensive!! & disappointing...there are lots of plants to try!!
 
MANY years ago I think I remember reading on a bottle of Excel it was a problem with Elodea- however that warning no longer appears. It might be Seachem figured out how to solve the challenge.
 
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