meegosh.com

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.