Equipment and plant sterilisation

[seangee]

Despite my best efforts I have managed to get camallanus worms in my community tank. Started treatment with eSHa-ndx and hopefully I've caught it early enough.

All the reading I have done stresses the importance of thoroughly sterilising all your equipment but I have seen no info on how. Ordinarily I would assume soaking in a bleach solution but just thought I'd check in case the eggs are impervious to bleach, should I consider boiling instead? Obviously not an option for the plants but the tank is unplanted with masses of floating plants so they are easy enough to replace.

As an aside I never add medication if its not needed. I know some people de-worm as a matter of course in the quarantine tank. Needless to say this little episode has given me a major fright - is this something I should consider?

 

[AbbeysDad]

As for sterilizing equipment there are chlorine, vinegar, and salt methods as well as some other chemical treatments, but with the possible exception of hydrogen peroxide or very light bleach/water (and some plants can't handle it) I don't know of a way to sterilize plants. As always, take it with a grain of salt, but this looks reasonable:
Sterilizing Aquarium Equipment Take 1
Sterilizing Aquarium Equipment Take 2
Sterilizing Aquarium Equipment Take 3

 

[Colin_T]

soak plants in straight cool bleach for 5-10minutes and then rinse well until clean. Then put in a bucket of water and double dose with dechlorinator.
Soft leaf plants like Ambullia and Cabomba should only be soaked for 5 minutes.

Filters, heaters, etc can be washed with straight bleach and left for 15-30minutes. Then rinsed well with fresh water. Don't use bleach on rubber or silicon because it can break them down if left on for too long.

The worm eggs need a host to get into fish. Host is usually copepods or daphnia. Culturing your own live food in clean containers and keeping water birds out of the containers will provide your fish with a clean food source.

Don't add water from a shop aquarium and avoid live food from natural waterways with water birds.

 

[AbbeysDad]

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on plant/equipment sterilizing and don't profess to be. However.....I don't think you want to soak plants in straight chlorine bleach as I think it would be way too harsh. Generally a 5% solution is suggested by some. As for equipment I think a 50/50 bleach/water mix is more than sufficient.

 

[Byron]

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on plant/equipment sterilizing and don't profess to be. However.....I don't think you want to soak plants in straight chlorine bleach as I think it would be way too harsh. Generally a 5% solution is suggested by some. As for equipment I think a 50/50 bleach/water mix is more than sufficient.

I would agree with this, also with a disclaimer for myself. But two marine biologists assisting me some time back on an issue recommended bleach only in dilution, and then repeated fresh water rinse and air drying. Obviously this is for equipment. Bleach is sometimes suggested with plants for snails and algae, but a botanist has said that anything strong enough to really be at all effective will inevitably harm the plant.

 

[Colin_T]

By straight bleach I am talking about bottles of bleach like White King bleach from supermarkets, and this stuff is only 3% sodium hyperchlorite or whatever it is. Older bottles of bleach have less chlorine to kill things so a stronger dose or more time in the bleach is needed if using bleach that is close to its expiry date.

Plants put in a strong but cool bleach solution need less time to kill off algae, snails, worms & bacteria compared to a weaker solution. Warm or hot bleach is more corrosive and the plants will not tolerate as much time in bleach if it's warm or hot, compared to cool bleach.

Algae only needs a minute in straight bleach and most bacteria die pretty quickly too. Snails and flatworms tend to drop off plants within seconds of being put in bleach. I suppose it depends on what we are trying to remove from the plants.

Most aquarium plants bought at petshops are grown out of water and the leaves are tougher than plants grown under water. The tougher leaves are quite resistant to bleach and a 5 minute soak in bleach is normally fine for them.

 

[seangee]

Thanks all. I am quite comfortable using diluted bleach and rinsing thoroughly. That's my normal routine. The question was about whether the camallanus eggs would survive this and I needed to consider an alternative.

 

[Colin_T]

no idea if the camallanus eggs will survive but they shouldn't because bleach dissolves organic matter and the eggs should be organic. Having said all this, even if the eggs hatch in an aquarium, they won't affect fish unless there is a host copepod or something similar to ingest the worm egg and then the copepod gets eaten by the fish.

 

[seangee]

According to Levsen, A. Aquarium Sciences and Conservation (2001) 3: 301. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013137801600:
"The present study has shown that under aquaria conditions, without any presence of copepods, C. cotti is able to infect various phylogenetically distant fish species directly for at least three generations. It was further shown that the infective free-living first-stage larvae may survive for more than three weeks in the host-external environment and that their host-attracting behaviour is not precluding direct transmission to the final fish host. Any treatment for C. cotti under aquaculture or aquarium conditions should be directed towards both individual infected fish hosts as well as the free-living larvae on the substrate."

I lost a single fish which I purchased around 6 weeks ago (1 of 4) and it was down to camallanus. Hadn't noticed any symptoms in any of the other fish, although once I had confirmed this one I may have manufactured some in my head (a couple of cardinals that seem thin and some glowlight tetras that may be bloated). I was unable to find any evidence that snails can or can't act as intermediate hosts but did find some forum posts on various sites claiming they can - based on personal observations rather than actual scientific evidence. I also read on several sites that these may exist in "well maintained" fish without causing any problems but could become a problem in the presence of stressful conditions.

Based on this article I treated the whole tank with Levamisole. I did find some worms on the substrate when I did the cleanup after 24 hours but not very many. I can't say whether it has spread or if all of the 4 fish were already infected. Good news is everyone in the tank is fine and behaving as normal. I did have a few dead MTS, but equally there are plenty that are alive and well (sorry don't have a clue how many MTS live in my sand ). So I will do the follow up in 2 weeks and a final half dose 2 weeks later to finish the bottle.