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Bleach dipping new plants?

Karen H

Member
Joined
30 Aug 2013
Messages
69
Location
North Yorkshire
I have heard people say to dip new plants in bleach to kill nasties. How do you do this . What is the safe level of bleach. Don't want to kill the plants, but I ending up with damsel fly larve in my other tank and want to avoid this in my new set up . Sick of trying to catch they and had one fly out when opened lid. I am still learning but hoping to improve .
 
Well, I'd say put them in a bucket of clean water for a couple hours, maybe a day before planting in the aquarium should suffice to reduce any "malware" that could be introduced in your tank.

Well that's my feeling at least.

I feel very unconfident with bleaching except in extreme cases (I did it once to get rid af hair algae on an anubia)
 
5% bleach solution. It can harm plants though.
 
I've done it. Don't remember any bad reaction. But I would go with carbonated water followed by a bicarb dip
 
I put a capful in a bucket of cold water and just dunked plants in. Left for a while, rinsed in bucket of fresh water and dunked in bucket of water with dechlorinator. Any bleach that is left on plants would soon react with organics in the fish tank anyway.

I had to do this as my brother, each time he visited, used to bring me aquatic plants for me and unless I bleached the plants my fish would get ich soon afterwards. His tank was not the best.

You can also user potassium permanganate solution as well, which is what some plant importers use to sterilise the plants they receive.
 
Bleach and fish tanks I don't like :(

When I had pretty bad algae i dipped some stauro in a bleach solution, the algae instantly dissapeared. Two weeks later the plants had melted lol

I also recharged a purigen pack in bleach. I rinsed ultra thoroughly and followed all instructions before returning it to my cannister filter. A week later i had no stem plants left.

I tend not to use bleach much these days :) lol
 
I'd be much more concerned about rinsing off any potential pesticides.
A couple of months back I put a couple of mother plants I'd bought online, straight into my main tank and killed every shrimp and snail in the tank - Disaster :( - Lesson Learned!!!
 
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