Plant bleach disinfecting dose

[mark4785]

I recently bought some water soldier plants for my pond. I attempted to disinfect them by placing 100ml of thin bleach in 10 litres of water. I submerged them in for around 5 minutes. They are now visibly dying.

I have obviously got the dose wrong.

What dose should I use?

 

[Uberhoust]

I don't know what "thin bleach" is, but I use a 20 parts water with 1 part household bleach with a max immersion time of 2 minutes with more sensitive plants no more than 1 minute. The original bleach concentration is approximately 5% sodium hypochlorite. The concentration you used seems like it was closer to 100 to 1 so I wouldn't expect the die off of the plants unless the concentration of "thin bleach" is quite a bit stronger than normal household bleach.

After the dip I quickly and heavily rinse and do a dip in water with chlorine removal treatment in it. This ensures the bleach dip is stopped quickly. If the dip is too long it can slow down the plant's establishment once in the tank or pond.

There is the possibility that your plants are dying for a different reason than the dip.

 

[MaloK]

Even your concentration was low at 1/100 for it would be 500 ml for 10 litres to achieve 1/20.

I doubt that even with the 5 minute exposition the plant would have such damage if very well rinsed.

A drastic water chemistry change can be the cause, more likely... I think.

 

[mark4785]

I don't know what "thin bleach" is, but I use a 20 parts water with 1 part household bleach with a max immersion time of 2 minutes with more sensitive plants no more than 1 minute. The original bleach concentration is approximately 5% sodium hypochlorite. The concentration you used seems like it was closer to 100 to 1 so I wouldn't expect the die off of the plants unless the concentration of "thin bleach" is quite a bit stronger than normal household bleach.

After the dip I quickly and heavily rinse and do a dip in water with chlorine removal treatment in it. This ensures the bleach dip is stopped quickly. If the dip is too long it can slow down the plant's establishment once in the tank or pond.

There is the possibility that your plants are dying for a different reason than the dip.

I used Hospec thin bleach which has a 2.5% concentration of sodium hypochlorite. Thin bleach is a type of bleach that doesn't contain a gelling agent like thick bleach would which is used to make the bleach stick longer to surfaces. I obviously don't want it sticking to the plants so I have thin bleach which can be easily washed off.

I guess I should try submerging them for around 1 minute next time.

 

[Rusty_Shackleford]

Or try reverse respiration that uses no toxic chemicals and only.leaves behind water as a by product.

 

[mark4785]

Even your concentration was low at 1/100 for it would be 500 ml for 10 litres to achieve 1/20.

I doubt that even with the 5 minute exposition the plant would have such damage if very well rinsed.

A drastic water chemistry change can be the cause, more likely... I think.

I'm not sure. They were very healthy when I opened the box that they arrived in with lots of reds and greens. After bleaching the leaves started going translucent and brownish.

I have struggled to adapt to disinfecting with bleach ever since virtually all forms of pond disinfectant, atleast in the UK, have disappeared from the market. I previously used Blagdon pond disinfectant with no issues.

 

[mark4785]

Or try reverse respiration that uses no toxic chemicals and only.leaves behind water as a by product.

How successful is this? Do I just place the plants in sparkling water?

 

[Rusty_Shackleford]

How successful is this? Do I just place the plants in sparkling water?

Not sparkling water, seltzer water.
Here's a link.

Reverse Respiration

Cleaning Aquatic Plants-chemical free!

reverserespiration.com

 

[mark4785]

Not sparkling water, seltzer water.
Here's a link.

Reverse Respiration

Cleaning Aquatic Plants-chemical free!

reverserespiration.com

This is not something I can take up as seltzer water is not available here in the UK.

 

[Rusty_Shackleford]

This is not something I can take up as seltzer water is not available here in the UK.

Tonic water is almost as good. I know you drink gin and tonic in the UK. The only difference is tonic water has a little more salt in it.

 

[Essjay]

I didn't know what seltzer water was so I googled it and came across a site says that US seltzer water and UK sparkling water are the same thing. That's why seltzer water isn't available in the UK, it's called sparkling water instead.

To put it simply, seltzer is just carbonated water. So in other words, water with a bit of a kick. Just like sparkling water, seltzer water is natural spring water that’s infused with CO2 under pressure to make it fizzy. Sparkling water, carbonated water and seltzer are terms that can be used interchangeably, with seltzer water being more commonly used in the US, and sparkling water favoured in the UK.

Make sure it's plain, not flavoured

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I have been bleach dipping plants for about 22 years now. But I am in the states and have never heard of thin bleach. My preference is for store brands of plain bleach. My normal mix is 19-1 water to bleach. However, not all plants can handle a bleach dip. The generally rule I follow is the thinner and more delicate the leaf, the greater the odds that it will not o well being bleached. So, if I have the slightest doubt about dipping a given plant, I prefer to do a small test dip to confirm the plant can or cannot handle bleaching.

Anubias are a good example of a plant that can usually handle dipping just fine. The longest I tent to dip anything for is 2 minutes and mot get only 90 seconds. I also have one other advantage. I have a private well and there is neither chlorine nor chloramine in my water. So I go from the bucket with bleach to an under the faucet rinse and then I have another bucket with a large dose of dechlor added into which I drop he plant. It stays there until I am ready to put it into a tank or if that is a while I move the plant to a bigger container filled with clean water only.

For the most part i am dipping plants from my planted tanks where I have let algae get out of hand. Most of my planted tanks were planted with cuttings from existing tanks. Over the past decade I have purchased almost no new plants at all. However, when I was ramping up with plants some time ago, I did bleach dip almost everything coming in that I felt could survive that process. While I always use thr 19-1 mix I do change the amount of time od the actualy dip based on the plant.

I have killed very few plants with bleach as experience is a great teacher. For many years I ran a 50 gal. tank with about 100 amano shrimp. I referred to the tank as my Amano Wash, I could take an algae covered plant out of tank and pit it into the 50 and in about 3 hours the plant was algae free. Initially I stocked the 50 with plants and would just trade them in and out. I would pull an algae covered plant from a tank and put it into the 50 from where I removed a similar sized plants which immediately replaced the algae covered one going in.

However, once I discovered how fast the shrimp actually worked, I started a maintenance routine by first pulling algae covered plants to the 50, working on tanks for a few hours and then returning the pulled plant to the exact same place from which it had been removed. As long as the rinse and dechor dip was done well, the returned plant was safe to return to a going tank.

I had never heard of reverse respiration until it was fairly recently posted about on this site. I researched it and decided it was not for me. I was OK doing the bleach dipping that has worked well for me for a very long time. That is not to say reverse respiration is a bad thing. However, at my peak i had 13 planted tank with the smallest a 5.5 gal. and the biggest a 150.

A lot of what we do in this hobby is to discover which of the options available works well for our specific tanks and fish and then stick with it unless we discover a better method or product. A perfect example for me is bleach dipping or the fact that I got my very first Aquaclear hang-on filters used about 23 years ago, It is still running today and it was followed by many more. At one time I had about 28 running and that included every single model they make. Today with only 11 tanks I still have 12 in use. But I went to a lot of air powered filtration over the years because our electricity supplier is one of the most expensive in America.