Bleach Cleaning A Tank And Gravel + Fake Plants?

[Inty]

so, a while ago, i posted about Toki, my fish, having random faded/white parts on him where the color would just seem to dissapear (if anyone remembers) it was under a slightly different name, Intyfooyoo. Toki died finally.. i say finally not because i wanted him too (of course not!) but because he seemed to be suffering and i didn't know what to do.
i had bought him medications for bacterial/fungal/parasite problems but none helped. when he died (about a week ago) i found another disease that i hadn't heard about. fish tuberculosis. he had just about all the signs and symptoms it listed so i'm just about positive that was it.
it was very sad, he was full of personality and was my very first betta, so i was sad to see him go. i will be getting my second betta pretty soon, so i'm excited about that.

but what i was really wondering was how i should go about cleaning it? i read in a recent post to use diluted bleach, but do i do the same thing for the gravel and fake plants? i want to get the disease killed completely so my new boy won't get it. i'm concerned because wouldn't it be kind of difficult to get ALL of the bleach solution out of the gravel and little nooks in the plants?

thanks for any help sorry about the rambling. hehe.

 

[Inty]

thanks for the help

 

[knt5005]

Hey, I had a fungal outbreak and had to sanitize my 10G. Here's what you want to do:

Use one part bleach to 19 parts water and fill the tank. Any plastic plants and media (filter, heater, etc) can be cleaned in this bleach solution. Any real plants have to be thrown away, as they cannot be sanitized. Don't bleach the rocks, they may hold a bit of the liquid which could kill your new betta. Instead, take a few rocks to test them in the oven. Put your oven at 450 degrees and let the rocks sit one some aluminum foil. Some rocks have a coating which may melt, if that happens lower the temperature to about 400. Line some cookie sheets with foil and spread out your rocks and bake them for an hour. That will kill anything on them. As for the tank and accessories, rinse, rinse, rinse, and rinse again with clean water. If you have time, you can let everything sit in sunlight to zap any remaining bleach. I didn't do that, I just rinsed and smelled everything (I had my roommates smell it too) until I couldn't smell any bleach.

My tank is now fine, the heater is fine, the filter is good too. You do need to remember to throw out your filter cartridge too. Don't submerge the filter completely (obviously), or any cords.

Oh, and my fish are fine now too! Sorry to hear about your loss though.

 

[jollysue]

I may say something foolish. I haven't read the thread

People may not answer if they don't have an answer.

The common wisdom on fish TB is to throw out everything. I think the science on it is iffy. If you want solid information and not speculation, do a google research. Not many know much. Try Wilder and Tolak in the emergency forum.

Bleach oxidizes, which means it burns up. Soak in a 10% bleach solution. Rinse well. Air dry and or sun dry. I will then soak everything in a declorinator solution. Remember most of us have chlorine in our water, and it is neutralized by a 24 hour naturalization (letting it sit) or using declorinator.

 

[dmarie04]

I've used a bleach solution to sanitize tanks, gravel, and decorations. Just do as they said above. Rinse rinse rinse and then soak everything in dechlorinator. I have no experience with fish TB, though. I don't know if bleach kills it or not.

 

[Inty]

thanks everyone for the help! i cleaned out the tank really well and i'm replacing the gravel and one of the fake plants, just to be safe, but everything else has been sanitized.

i looked around about fish TB and cleaning stuff after a fish dies from it and i found the perfect article for my situation. here's the link in case anyone else is interested. thanks again for the help!

http/www.qeok.com/fish/2418-1-fish-3.html


(P.S. i'm getting my new boy tomorrow! so excited! i will post pictures on a new thread for those that are interested <3 )

 

[mommyof2bettas]

Tbh, fish tb cannot be scrubbed away, throw the tank and plants, and gravel, and anything else that was in it out. Sorry, but if it was fish tb, your fish will catch it if in the same tank...

 

[Inty]

hm, yeah.. i think when i get my new boy this weekend i'm going to buy a whole new tank, gravel, plants, everything. but do you think it would be ok if i keep the heater? i bleach cleaned that as best as i could, along with everything else (which i won't use, but at least its clean. hehe) so what do you think about keeping the heater? he only had it in his tank about 1 or 2 days before he died.

 

[jollysue]

That link is just a lot of opinions and worthless, imo. I know for sure that soaking in warm water and scrubing will not rid anything of anything.

Since there seems to be no hard evidence, if you can manage it and you are pretty sure it is fish TB, get rid of everything

Has anyone heard of using UV?

 

[Inty]

That link is just a lot of opinions and worthless, imo. I know for sure that soaking in warm water and scrubing will not rid anything of anything.

Since there seems to be no hard evidence, if you can manage it and you are pretty sure it is fish TB, get rid of everything

Has anyone heard of using UV?

i did bleach clean everything and after rinsing everything out thouroughly, then scrubbed with really really hot water and let it sit in the sun for a few hours. so do you think i won't be able to use the heater at all even though it was only in there for a day or so before he died?

and what's UV?

 

[jollysue]

UV light. It is the same thing USDA is considering irradiating all meats with. Water passes by a Ultra Violet light and the water is irradiated, killing everything--algae, bacteria, parasites, fungus, virus, etc. I just put one on the 100 USG community tank that has had several major infections in the past. It is very hard to catch individual fish and also to treat. So I thought, what the? giv it a try. I had one appisto that I believe had TB. He is gone now. He got very twisted. But throughing out a 100 usg tank with hundreds of dollars of fish, just has not been my choice yet. I have not seen the major symptoms of TB in any other fish, but I do have unexplaned deaths with some of the smaller Tetras.

So I am going to see what the UV accomplishes. I cctually have to get a stonger one than the one I have set up now. But this one should work for bacteria, algae and fungus, just not necessarily parasites.

I have soaked heaters in bleach. If you are going to give the tank and filter a try (did you by the way run bleach through the filter--runnung?--might as well do the heater too. I think just try to keep them together. It is all a turkey shoot in these cases.