Treating plants with bi carb

[terrypin]

I keep a planted tank and in this apart from fish I keep shrimp and trumpet snails. I understand that I need to treat any new plants by soaking in bicarbonate of soda. What ratio is best and for how long.

 

[Uberhoust]

I am curious how this question gets answered. I haven't heard of using Sodium Bicarbonate for a plant dip. Traditionally I use a bleach dip for 1 to 2 minutes in a 1:20 solution of normally concentrated bleach. It works well but at 2 minutes it will adversely affect some plants, so an alternative would be good.

 

[10 Tanks]

I keep a planted tank and in this apart from fish I keep shrimp and trumpet snails. I understand that I need to treat any new plants by soaking in bicarbonate of soda. What ratio is best and for how long.

Hello terrypin. A simple rinse in warm tap water will remove anything that may have attached itself to the plant. Plant companies are generally very careful in their plant growing process. There's really no reason to use a chemical on anything that's going into your tank. The reason is simple, you don't know how your fish will be affected.

10 Tank (Now 11)

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I have never seen snail eggs be removed by warm water unless maybe it was warm enough to kill a plant?

Some snail eggs may even survive bleaching. I have never used this but, Potassium permanganate is supposd to do in snail eggs.

I have always used 1-19 water-bleach and, if a plant is somewhat thin leaved, I will either do a test dip first or know not to dip it at all. Anubias and similar thick leaved plants get 2 minute dips and most everything else gets 90 seconds. It usually takes about a day for the dead algae to vanish, ofen into fish.

 

[seangee]

Wherever possible I buy tissue cultured plants. That way they are guaranteed free of contaminants and / or hitch hikers

 

[Uberhoust]

Plant companies are generally very careful in their plant growing process

I have no doubt that the plants from the growers may be quite clean, but, the local fish stores here place the plants into tanks that are not necessarily clean rather than into special tanks that just have plants, and I doubt that all suppliers ensure their holding tanks are free from potential pests. One local store does place plants in special aquariums but those tanks have visible snail populations and if they get a large shipment of fish and no room those tanks end up with fish and plants.

A bleach dip done right does not introduce bleach into the aquarium, the dip is followed by a long rinse and in my case I do a final rinse in chlorine treatment before going into an aquarium with fish.

I have no snails, not necessarily a good thing. I also have no other interesting things such as hydra or fresh water scuds.

 

[terrypin]

I have trumpet snails and shrimp I don't want to lose them when I add new plants I thought the bicarb would remove any pesticides the plants were treated with. Is there a way to do this safely

 

[TwoTankAmin]

There should not be pesticides on aquatic plants. other junk yes, but exactly how would you treat a plant and not effect the entire container

I routinely remove plants, bleach dip, make safe as above and put them right back into tanks. I do not lose anything from doing this. Most bleach iss about 5-7% if I remember right, Now mix that 1-19 with water and the concentration drops markedly. It kills the algae but not the plant as long as the dip is for the right amount of time. (Also a few plants cannot be dipped it will kill them. Mostly the more delicately leaved ones.)

Dechlor works very fast. Once a plant comes out of the dip it goes under my tap which has no chlorine/chloramine for about 15 seconds. Then the plant goes into the bucket with a huge dose of dechlor for about 30 seconds and then back into the tank. But the residual amount of chlorine or chloramine in ones tap is a whole lot lower than what is used for the dipping process. So you can rinse under tap with this as long as the next step is the dechlor bucket.

edited to fix typos