Re: Bleach treatment

To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
Subject: Re: Bleach treatment
From: krombhol at felix_teclink.net (Paul Krombholz)
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 19:45:35 -0500

>What about plants like Cabomba, Rotala Macranda and Java Moss?  I suspect
>these plants would suffer greatly from a bleach treatment.  The evil
>Filamentous algae just LOVES Cambomba and didn't seem terribly affected by
>my bleach treatments.  I gave up trying to fight it and eventually the
>filamentous algae went away.  It was the worst and the last of all the
>algae I had to deal with in that first 6 months.
>
The hair algae vary quite a bit in their sensitivity to bleach.
Oedogonium, the species that prompted me to develop the bleach treatment,
appeared to be entirely killed by only 30 seconds of immersion in the 5%
bleach.  Cladophora, on the other hand needs 4 minutes.  Fortunately,
Cladophora spreads slowly, and the slender-stemmed plants can grow free of
it.  Cladophora tends to attach to thick-stemmed slow growing plants with
rizomes like Crypts and swords.  Fortunately, these plants can survive 4
minutes easily.  Oedogonium spreads rapidly, but is much more easily
killed.  I have treated Cabomba, Rotala Macandra and Java moss for two
minutes, and they have all survived.  I was a bit surprised to see the Java
moss survive.  It is important that any treated plants, but especially
these slender-stemmed species get put in good growing conditions
immediately after the treatment.


>I scrape my glass at least every two weeks simply because I hate seeing
>spots on the front and sides of the glass.  My main planted tank is part of
>our decor and I want it to look clean and well kept.

The bleach treatment does not seem to get the green spot algae, but that
was never much of a problem for me.  My ramshorn snails keep it under
control.
>

Paul Krombholz                  Tougaloo College, Tougaloo, MS  39174
In cool Jackson, Mississippi.