Will A Mild Bleach Solution Kill Off Algea?

[Jer-]

Hi

I have a slate of Riccia and its FULL of fuzzy hair algea.

Is it possible to dip this slate with the riccia in a bleach solution?
Will this kill off the algea? or will it also kill the plant as well? I cannot afford to lose any riccia cos they dont sell riccia around all the fish shops i know...i was lucky jus that one time.

Please help

 

[houndour]

I believe it is possible, but still a risk. I haven't personally dipped plants in bleach. I thinks it's supposed to be a soluition of 19 parts water, 1 part bleach. And dip the plants for 2 minutes. But best to wait for Zig or someone else to confirm that. Then you dip the plants into a bucket of clean water containing dechlorinator.

Maybe you could try just a small bit? See how it goes?

 

[zig]

houndour is correct 19 parts water 1 part bleach, although for riccia i would dilute the mix further 1 part bleach and 24 parts water and no more than 2 minutes in the solution.

I tried this a while ago on a couple of plants and it did work, but the algae came back after about 10 days so you might be wasteing your time unless you can fix the reason you are getting the algae in the first place, in my case it was an issue with co2 and in your case i would suspect the same, given the hassle you have had finding yeast.

I wouldnt try it with all the riccia either, because there is a good chance you may kill it, although having said that i tried it with a type of delicate hairgrass and the hairgrass is still alive in my tank, if you try it with other plants dont dip the roots if you can avoid it.

It is a last resort solution and as long as your happy with that i would try it, but you really need to fix whats causeing the problem in the first place or it will probably just come back again.

Make sure you have 3x the normal concentration of dechlorinator in a seperate container and dip the plant in this immeaditaly afterwards and then rinse the plant under the tap for a couple of minutes.

The bleach i used was "Parazone Origional Thin Bleach", the thicker bleaches smelled to strong even when diluted so i didnt use them.