Never, ever, trust "the smell test"
Remember Dechlor neutralizes bleach and it is cheap. Use a lot of it.
How to sterilize aquarium equipment from bacterial disease
- Thread starter AquaticAustin
- Start date
Remember Dechlor neutralizes bleach and it is cheap. Use a lot of it.
You can get rid of columnaris, as long as it's not an antibiotic-resistant strain, with a combination of Maracin and Maracin II. Columnaris also likes warm water so drop the tank temp to 75F or a little less for the treatment period. I'd try treatment before completely tearing down and rebuilding the set-up.
Mark
Mark
Hey mark, yes I did treat the tank (only w. maracyn-two) and I dropped the temp to 75deg, and added aquarium salt (its not salt tolerant) And actually decreased aeration in the tank as it needs oxygen to thrive. Treated for the 5 day period and I really think I beat the disease. I only lost one fish on the last day of treatment and it was probably because of the high ammonia spike (between .25-.5 ppm) I knew something was wrong because one of my yellow fined fish turns black when hes stressed so I knew to check asap and sure enough had that ammonia and that night had one of the tetras die but everyone else is still doing very good a week later!
This thread was for my QT tank that I did tear down and clean everything so I can use it as a QT for replacement fish once I make sure the disease is gone. All in all, 6 fish lost out of my stock is way better than I thought
In the future: for live plants you can do a short soak in a mixture of 1 part bleach to 19 parts water. Let soak for 1-2 min then rinse thoroughly taking the time to rinse each leaf until they don't feel slippery. Bleach on anything will make if feel slippery almost like a biofilm would. Keep rinsing until it is no longer slippery. You can do the same thing to gravel and use 100% strength. When rinsing make sure you no longer have the slippery feel. I have done this and it works just fine. You would still add dechlor for the first fill and next 2 PWC's. Use Prime as directed and no need to overdose.
"the smell test" has yet to fail me although I always soak in dechlor water anyways...
