This is how my friend do it
Disinfecting Your Tank
By Angel L. Ampil
Fish getting sick and dying is but a natural thing for an aquarium hobbyist. This may be something we all dread, but it is also something we learn to accept because we are caring for a living thing and eventually it will die some day. We try our best to prevent disease from occurring in our tanks, but somehow, they still do happen.
When the fish get sick, we try our best to treat them with all of the available cures in the market. Having a tank with a disease outbreak is bad enough; but have you ever experiences the disease that keep coming back? For some reason some diseases are so hard to eradicate, they simply keep manifesting themselves in the tank and killing all the fish you put in.
Drastic measures are called for. Simply washing the tank will not solve the problem. This will not remove whatever disease that may have infected your tank. It is time to disinfect your tank.
There are many ways to disinfect a tank. Potassium Permanganate was a familiar method in the past, but I believe this is no longer offered for sale over the counter. Others opt for Formalin. Some use a very strong salt solution. Others leave their tanks to dry under the sun for 3 days. However, the method I am most comfortable using was one suggested by my good friend Patrick Uy.
Patrick suggested Chlorine. Of course it makes perfect sense since our own water supply uses chlorine to kill water-borne bacteria. Chlorine should be able to eradicate these thereby disinfecting your tank.
After convincing myself that I would use Chlorine, I was dumbfounded by this question: Where do I get Chlorine? I had the faintest idea where to buy chlorine. I am sure that it is a regular item that can be sold over the counter since swimming pool owners regularly purchase this in the up keep of their pools. However, surely this was sold in large quantities… in drums I believe. I would only need a few scoops per tank.
I initially thought of asking my friends with swimming pools. Maybe I could just ask for a cup of Chlorine after all, I don’t need a whole drum. Days have past yet I had not even bothered to make some calls. In short, this plan never even got off.
One day I had some friends over and during the course of the evening this issue of where to get Chlorine came up. My buddy Nikki mentioned that Chlorine is readily available in repacked sachet in “Sari- Sari†stores. This was such a revelation to me and I could not believe that Chlorine was so easy to get.
Apparently Chlorine is sold in our own Philippine mini stores because some use this not only to disinfect clothes but also to make them white. To some folks Chlorine is a part of their laundry procedure. I am no laundry expert and I have no idea what Nikki was talking about, but as far as I am concerned, Chlorine is just a few blocks away.
The next day Nikki came back with a few packs of Chlorine which I used in some tanks awaiting to be disinfected. I poured the content of one sachet in a 15-gallon tank filled with water. Each sachet contained maybe ½ teaspoon of Chlorine granules. I let the solution stand for two days. After which I scrubbed the panels with foam and rinsed the tank thoroughly. I filled the tank with water and let the water stand for another two days. I threw this water and did a final rinsing. I refilled the tank, added anti-Chlorine and it was ready for use. I placed a small cichlid as test fish. The next day the cichlid was doing well and I was happy I had successfully disinfected my tank.
It was really an experiment more than anything else. I had no way of measuring how much Chlorine I used. I was sure Chlorine would kill all the pathogens that had affected my fish. But one thing for sure, Chlorine is poisonous to fish so I need to thoroughly rinse the tank before using it.
I was very pleased with the results of this initial procedure that I began to ask around where I could buy some more. I then found my way to a chemical distributor somewhere in Quezon City. I was able to purchase a kilo of Calcium Hypochlorite for P225.00. This one kilo should last me about a year or two.
Now that I am confident in using Chlorine to disinfect my tanks, I have begun standardizing my procedures. I fill up the tank with water and use ½ teaspoon for every 20 gallons. This time instead of just disinfecting the tank, I also throw in all aquarium stuff that needs to be cleaned. I throw in sponge filters, box filters, overhead filters, nets, air hoses, siphons, glass dividers, smaller aquariums, suction caps, air stones, glass cleaners, gravel cleaners, rocks, shells, etc… almost anything I can find in the tank.
I then affix an air pump with air stone to circulate the water in the tank. I keep them soaked for the next two days and scrub them using the same water. I then rinse and scrub them in running water to remove traces of Chlorine. I fill up the tank and leave them with the aerator on for the next two days. After, I wash them individually under running water and they should be ready for use.
My rule of thumb is to over-rinse since Chlorine is lethal to fish. Also by over-rinsing I feel more confident that the tank and other accessories are Chlorine free. This procedure has been working for me and I am happy with the results. It not only disinfects my tank but likewise I have achieved other advantages like: Glass panels in aquariums are clear; the calcium stains are also removed; algae are eliminated and everything looks clean and new.
More importantly I feel secure that my tank is now disease free and I am confident that the next set of fish I will put in the tank will no longer get sick or die. And I can enjoy my hobby without the worries.
. he's in a small thing right now (i figured less than a gallon with clean water was better than his cup for now) and i was wondering how to clean shadow's old tank out so there was no risk of my new boy getting dropsys.
Shadow.
