Bleaching Seashells for fw tank?

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Kari

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Apr 14, 2005
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Indiana USA
I'd heard somewhere that you can soak seashells in bleach water, and then regular water, to make them safe to use in fw tanks. Well, I tried it. Now I have a question because it did something really weird when I added the bleach. Within about 10 minutes, the water got really cloudy, and within half an hour, there was solid white chunks in the water. I've done this three times now with one particular shell, and it still clouds when I add the bleach, but the chunky white stuff looks more like a white sandy sediment now. Of course, I've never done this, so maybe it's supposed to do that, but I've never seen bleach do that to anything, so I figured I'd ask.
 
My chemistry is a little rusty after many years out of university but Id say that the chlorine is dissolving your shells into carbonates. Carbonates are insoluble and that is the white sediment you see in the water. I wouldn't put the shells in the fw aquarium, with or without previous bleaching.
JMO
 
Big C is correct. The shells (with or without) bleaching will break down and leech carbonates into your water...creating an additional water hardness problem.
 
I definately don't need another problem! That sucks, I love the shells, they're more natural looking.

Thank you for the advice though. After looking through a couple of the other posts about using seashells in fw tanks, I realized I probably wouldn't be able to use them no matter what I did with them :(
 
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