So you have some new plants you want to add to your tank? Some people will just throw them in their tank and hope for the best. This is not the best way to go about things obviously. One thing that many fishkeepers recommend is giving your plants a bleach ‘dip’. Basically the goal of this is to disinfect the plant. Plants can carry snails, snail eggs, algae and even parasites! If you do a bleach dip on your plants then you will not have to worry about any of that.

Doing a bleach dip is rather easy. It is done by making a 5% bleach mixture. Basically you want to create a 1:19 ratio of bleach to water. Just for an example, you would want to mix 1 cup bleach with 19 cups of water. This probably is way too much for an average dip job; I was just trying to provide an easy example. I usually mix mine in a bucket that I have designated for fish only use.

What you will want to do is mix your bleach solution in a bucket or a Ziploc bag. Then you will want to add your plants to bucket and let them soak. When I ‘dip’ them I keep the rhizome, roots, and/or bulb out of the solution. I will do a quick 15 second dip of the roots/bulb/rhizome after the main part of the plant has soaked. There are conflicting reports about what length of time you should leave certain plants in the dip. What I have found to work for me with my Amazon Swords is a one minute dip. I then rinse it multiple (5+) times before I finally rinse it with some dechlorinated tap water. What I do next is just what I have found to work for me… I let the plants sit in a bucket of double dosed dechlorinator and leave them there for at least two hours before planting in the main tank.

It is a fairly easy process but it could save your fish, tank, and a lot of time! I am always cautious about what I add to my tanks – after I learned the hard way with Ich. Now I take the time to QT my fish properly and disinfect all plants before adding them to my tanks.

I finally got around to cleaning out the 30 gallon tank last night. I figured it was time to do some cleaning and some redecorating. I scraped the glass, vacuumed the gravel and did some trimming of the Java Moss. I basically removed the basketball sized clump of Java Moss from the back/center of the tank. That freed up a lot of space and I moved the driftwood back a little. I reseated some of the fake plants and did some more trimming of the Java Moss in different areas of the tank.

I also did some cleaning in the 10 gallon tank. I cleaned the glass, I cleaned the large fake plant, I removed all the Java Moss from the heater, and I trimmed the Swords a bit. After that was all done I vacuumed the sand to get the detritus off the surface. I then stirred the sand with the end of the net I have.

It is amazing what an hours’ worth of work will do for your tanks! It is like two completely new tanks! I will post some before and after pictures below so that you can see what exactly changed. I think you’ll be impressed also!

I think it is finally time to clean the 30g tank. I am thinking that I will take this time to rearrange things in the tank. I am going to cut back quite a bit of Java Moss, I will move the trimmings to the 10g tank. I am going to try to create some more hiding spots for my guppies so that I can move all my guppies, and maybe my neons, to the 10g. I might get some new, larger fish for the 30g tank.

I am thinking that I want to keep the rock formation along the back wall but I would like to ‘open’ up the middle of the tank. The Java Moss Mass (as I like to call it) is taking up, I’d say, about a third of the tank right now. I want to keep some as the fish seem to like picking at it from time to time. I would however, like a more open tank. It just seems that everyone has their area, and that is it.

The angelfish pretty much has the whole left side of the tank to himself. The diamond tetras have their spot front and center. The neons hide at the bottom in the caves, occasionally poking their head out to chase a guppy away. The guppies usually hide up at the top and chase each other around. The main reason I am going to ‘open’ up the center is because my clown loach and upside-down catfish always hide behind all the Java Moss and underneath the heater. I am going to try to make it so that I can see them all the time, not just when they come out to pick at some algae wafers or uneaten food.

I might play around with the 10g tonight also. It has some serious algae on the back wall that showed up after I swapped substrates. I got most of the algae off the fake plant in the center. My swords are taking off with the new light and root tabs I have been giving them.

I’ll post some before and after pictures of both tanks when I get around to doing them. I am hoping to get the water changed in the 30g tonight and if there is enough time and I am not tired, I will rescape it also. I’ll keep you posted!

It has been a while since I updated this last so I figured I would post an update. We had our successful maiden voyage in our camper that weekend. The weather was perfect, even though the Penguins lost 5-0 that night to Detroit. It doesn’t matter though since we won the Stanley Cup! Woo Hoo! We ended up finding a bar that was on a horse ranch and watched the game there.

I haven’t gone out since then but I am planning some trips in July. I would like to go back to Tionesta and do some rafting this time. I just wish we had an SUV or a truck so we could go out more often. I hate having to ask to use someone else’s vehicle all the time.

As far as the fish tanks go, I haven’t really done too much to them. I cleaned out the 10g the other night and I am going to do the 30g sometime this weekend. The 30g is algae free and the 10g has some diatoms on the glass still. It comes off really easily with a MagFloat. I think I am going to look for some new fish for the 10g. I also might move things around and put all the guppies in the 10g with the Kuhli’s and my lone Peppered Cory. I might pick up some more cories to give my lone one some company. If I get the guppies out of the 30g I could probably get some slightly more aggressive fish for the top tank. I was thinking about trying German Blue Rams (GBRs) again if I can find some quality ones. I also might go back to Seahorse in Gibsonia and get a bumblebee goby – if they still have him in stock.

I’ll post some updated pictures after I clean up the 30g this weekend. Its been a while since I took a full tank shot of both tanks. I am curious to see the growth of my Swords and Java Moss. Until next time…

A few weeks ago I picked up three Kuhli Loaches and 10 Ghost shrimp from a LFS. I wanted to get some Kuhli Loaches to help stir the sand in my 10g. It turns out they don't really burrow into the sand. They mainly hide themselves in the roots of my plants and under rocks. The most they will burrow is to hide themselves. Even then they don't really burrow, they just shake back and forth until their body is covered with a thin layer of sand.

It has been a few weeks and the Ghost shrimp are slowly dying off. I fed a few to my angelfish, which loved them! I think I have two or three shrimp left. One of my peppered cories stopped eating and was getting really skinny. I tried to QT him and treat him but he was dead the next day. The current stocklist of the 10g is three Kuhli loaches, 2-3 Ghost shrimp, one albino cory, one peppered cory and my favorite guppy, Meegosh Jr., or MJ for short. It is a pretty low bio-load. I am thinking of new tankmates for the 10g but I want to be careful about nippy fish as MJ has a long flowing tail, which my angelfish thought would be a good snack. Now that MJ has been in the 10g pretty much by himself, other than the bottom feeders and shrimp, his tail has completely grown back!

I'll post some more once I get some pictures of the 30g long substrate swap. It is going to be quite the chore so it'll have to wait till a weekend. Thanks for reading!