Quick methods to rid DT of velvet?

[Iconicjellyfish]

Just recently bought a tank from someone local and it had only sand in it and he also gave me a fire fish, fire shrimp and conch. Idk if he know or it just so happened to appear when I got it but I put 3 clowns from my 1 year old 70 gallon and within 2-3 days they broke out in velvet and died same day except the firefish. Luckily there isn’t anything in the tank other then the rock that I really care about, I’d love to save the conch and fire shrimp but I’m not to worried about flushing them. My question mostly is, is there a way to speed up the process on the display tank to get rid of the velvet? I see most people waiting like 3 months, but if I run rodi water in the tank for a few days should it be good to go? (Of course qt any fish that go in after that) Or bleach the tank? For bleaching will the rock always leach bleach into the tank? I was told that once bleach water dried the bleach is gone for good. Also will velvet stick to the fire shrimp and conch if I decide to go the fallow way? TIA!

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Yes, it is possible/probable that the fire shrimp and conch can carry velvet into a new tank by virtue of the water on their bodies.
If you use bleach, be sure to get pure 5% household bleach, almost all the stuff I see nowadays has perfume or thickeners in it. I get plain bleach at Gordon foods.
You only need to bleach at 200 to 500 ppm, doing more just makes it harder to rinse off. Something like 200 ml per 100 gallons will kill of everything except perhaps some fluke cysts.
Jay

 

[Brett S]

Bleach will kill the velvet, but it will also kill everything in the tank, including the shrimp and conch and good bacteria on the rocks. If you go with the bleach option you will need to start the tank over from scratch, cycling it again and everything. You will also likely have a lot of die off of algae and other things, so you will probably need to wait several weeks or months for all of that to decompose, otherwise you will be fighting high ammonia. I’m not sure the end result will really be much shorter than just leaving the tank fallow for a while.

And if you do decide to go the bleach route, please remove the shrimp and the conch first. Donate them to your local fish store if you don’t want them, but don’t just poison them with bleach.

 

[Iconicjellyfish]

Bleach will kill the velvet, but it will also kill everything in the tank, including the shrimp and conch and good bacteria on the rocks. If you go with the bleach option you will need to start the tank over from scratch, cycling it again and everything. You will also likely have a lot of die off of algae and other things, so you will probably need to wait several weeks or months for all of that to decompose, otherwise you will be fighting high ammonia. I’m not sure the end result will really be much shorter than just leaving the tank fallow for a while.

And if you do decide to go the bleach route, please remove the shrimp and the conch first. Donate them to your local fish store if you don’t want them, but don’t just poison them with bleach.

I really don’t want to have to kill them but donating them to a fish store might be worse since I had velvet no?, it’s a newer tank that’s only 20gallons that I put media in from my 1year tank so there’s not much in that tank as far as algea practically none actually.