Cloromax in bleach is ok after a good rinse?

Sod Buster

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I need to sterilize my phytoplankton reactor. I wanted to bleach the airline tubing, vessel, and cap. I've read through the recent threads and didn't find a definitive answer on it. I can go to the dollar store and get generic bleach, but Clorox with cloromax is what I have in the wash room. I want to soak in a 10% bleach solution, rinse in tap water, then a rubbing alcohol bath during reassembly. Anybody have an opinion?
 

geddavis

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I’d go with normal bleach. Be sure to rinse it like 10+ times and let it completly dry. Then soak it in water with prime in it.
 

geddavis

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I’d go with normal bleach. Be sure to rinse it like 10+ times and let it completly dry. Then soak it in water with prime in it.
 

Dkeller_nc

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This sort of question gets asked a lot in the chemistry forums, with some degree of variation, such as "are there any reef-safe detergents?". The bottom line is that all detergents and other cleaning products will nuke your reef if you get a substantial amount of it into your tank, and all of these cleaning products are perfectly safe as long as they're used on a non-absorbent piece of equipment and they're removed by thorough rinsing. I add the caveat here about "non-absorbent" to exclude things like felt reef socks, where it can be very difficult to completely remove the cleaning product from the piece of equipment.

I will also note that bleach isn't necessary to thoroughly clean a phytoplankton culture tank - regular old dishwashing detergent like Dawn will do the trick. That's assuming that you're not actually doing sterile cell culture, where you'd need a laminar flow hood and a way to sterile filter seawater to ensure no bacterial or other contamination in your cultures.
 
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Not a seawater setup. A bubbler in a jar with a lid. Last weeks culture crashed and wanted to sterilize is all. I did a 10 minute generic bleach soak on everything rubber or vinyl, and I'm rinsing right now. I will let it dry out and do an alcohol rub before I reboot the culture.
All pieces are non absorbent. A jar, a culture from the fridge, a external light, and bubbles.
 

Dkeller_nc

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There's no harm in it, but the alcohol is unnecessary, since adding air through an air pump will instantly contaminate the culture with anything that happens to be in the air, and the bleach has already taken care of anything aquatic that might've gotten into the culture.
 
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Ok. It's in a cupboard in my kitchen. I smelled a strong chemical like odor, and the culture went from green to yellow to dead in 2 days. I will clean the filter on the air pump also and investigate further. Thanks for the knowledge.
 
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