Tank decon

Marc88 · Nov 20, 2020

I'll keep it short. My DT may or may not be infected with Ich (the story is not relevant). Regardless, I'm currently redoing my aquascape to a NSA, and I'm going to QT my livestock in copper.

My question is simple. I'm trying to avoid 76 days fallow for the DT...again

If I fill my tank with freshwater and run it for a few days(2-7), would that be enough to sterilize the tank ridding it of ich? I'm not concerned with bacteria at all.

I was planning on running bleach to sterilized but didn't want the hassle of multiple flushes and dechlorinations. If bleach were not necessary to clean the talk of parasites, then I don't want to use it.

Thoughts?

Jay Hemdal · Nov 20, 2020

Cryptocaryon isn't the only pathogen that you might want to clear from your DT. Freshwater will work for that (I'd give it 72 hours though, and ensure the tank is filled all of the way up, with everything running).

If maintaining the bacteria isn't an issue, then bleach+freshwater would be the way to go, it will even kill Mycobacteria and fluke eggs. I do hate the hassle of rinsing bleach though. In theory, you can rinse once, use sodium thiosulphate on the residual chlorine and be done with it - but I'm always leery of that, so I rinse and rinse and rinse again.

I'm in the process of evaluating hydrogen peroxide for this use, but I'm not done and I don't have good dosing info yet - primarily because the dose is related to the organic loading of the tank, and that is different in every case. I like peroxide because it is so easy to rinse out and it decomposes, or you can use sodium thiosulfate to neutralize it.

You could add 125 ml of 3% peroxide per 100 gallons tank volume to your freshwater soak, and if I did the math right, that would give you a 10 ppm peroxide dose. If nothing else, that would help oxidize any organic matter that died off during the FW soak.

Jay

Marc88 · Nov 20, 2020

Well that's good news. Bleach is still a thought I just done can't the hassle. Would fresh water not kill flukes eggs if left in the tank for a week? What amount of time would be good? I have tome, at least 30 days. I do want to cycle the new rock also.

Jay Hemdal · Nov 20, 2020

I skimmed Barrett Christie's monograph on Neobenedena just now, I saw this statement:

Freshwater dips suffer the disadvantage of only removing juvenile and adult parasites, with
no effect on eggs.

That was on page 68 of this journal: http://drumandcroaker.org/pdf/2020Issue.pdf

Now - these were dips of up to an hour, not a bath like you are proposing. I do recall Barrett saying that hyposalinity keeps the eggs from hatching, and that after 30 days, they are no longer viable. Maybe pure freshwater kills them faster?

Jay