Dip method appears to work

[BrianNY]

What to do on a rainy Sunday? Can't play golf so......

Being recently inspired by the new Aquascaping sub forum I decided to tackle my low light 55g. I pulled out all the plants, rocks, driftwood and all the accessories that by now were covered in BBA. Big gravel vac. Cleaned the filter. 50% pwc. More than an hours worth of diatom filtering.

I decided that the only plants I wanted to put back in this tank were the Anubias nana, crypts, and a few giant val. 20 cups of water and 1 cup of pure bleach went into a large bucket. The plants went in for 3 minutes and then were transferred to a bucket of fresh water ard rinsed. Rocks and driftwood had the same treatment but stayed in bleach solution considerably longer.

I'm happy to report that this really seems to have worked. Time will tell if I've damaged the plants. They appear to be fine with just the remnants of dead BBA. I didn't trim a single leaf on the Anubias and if they survive, will have enough to completely cover the foreground.

 

[Lonewolfblue]

Cool, I'm thinking of doing the same thing tomorrow.

 

[Lonewolfblue]

Question, when dipping plants, do you just dip the plant, or roots and all?

 

[Jchillin]

I'm interested in seeing the results, I know you've been battling this for quite some time.

LWB, I doubt if the roots were submerged, hopefully Brian will confirm this.

 

[BrianNY]

Actually I dipped the whole plant, roots and all. It didn't make sense to me to hold all those individual plants for 3 minutes each.

 

[7Enigma]

Any concern about the driftwood possibly absorbing and slowly releasing the chlorine into the tank? This is assuming your 55 low-light will have fish in it. Also did you put any dechlor in the bucket of fresh water after the bleach dip?

Thanks.

justin

 

[BrianNY]

Good questions Justin. The tank does have fish in it and I'm always concerned about using poisons. The porous rocks and driftwood have not gone back into the tank yet. Time is on my side so I'm giving them a few days to leach in buckets of fresh water which will be changed daily. I'm thinking 4 days allows for plenty of time.

Edit: I didn't see the need to use dechlor when rinsing or leaching. The tank got another 40% pwc this morning. I'll do one every day for a few days just because it's a good idea. So thankful for python.

 

[BrianNY]

Well the results are..... Anubias is thriving without the hint of BBA. Crypts melting. Val dead.

 

[TwoHobbies]

Do you think....Keeping the roots out may have worked?

 

[Lonewolfblue]

I will be doing the dip method when I move plants from the 75G to my 29G. Hopefully this will thin things out a little more.

 

[BillD]

It would seem that 3 minutes was too long for the plants that died. I recall Dorothy Reimer (AGA) describing the same treatment, but indicating a soak time of only 1 minute. Will be intersting to hear other peoples results. I have had no problems with 1 minute, but hornwort doesn't like it at all.