bleaching tank?

[Matt724]

I've had a small planted tank (or really just a tank stuffed with plants) for about 7 months now, since my real planted tank ended up getting infested with hair algae and i had to bleach it, but i had already bought $40 worth of plants so after a really weak peroxide dip, I stuffed all the plants that were in the 40 into the 10. Up until the last month or so, I've been pretty much algae free for the most part, but now all of a sudden it just shot up, growing on everything, including the tank. Now I heard that it spreads through spores, and since I plan to take this tank down completely, I want to sterilize it, so I can be sure it won't spring up on me again. Should I just fill it up with a really strong bleach solution like 75-80% or fill the tank up with salt water? What should I do? I want to reuse or sell the tank since now its acrylic and has a nice DIY lighting fixture that I don't want to just toss.

Please give me some good advice. Much appreciated MFK

 

[LD50]

I did this once, on a 75g glass tank. Filled it with a 10% bleach solution and let it sit on the back porch for a day. Dumped it, washed it up with tap water and filled it with tap for a day or two emptied it and set it up. Had no problems, but idk how acrylic will be with bleach.

 

[Matt724]

I did this once, on a 75g glass tank. Filled it with a 10% bleach solution and let it sit on the back porch for a day. Dumped it, washed it up with tap water and filled it with tap for a day or two emptied it and set it up. Had no problems, but idk how acrylic will be with bleach.

Hmm, that's a good question.
Does anyone know what happens when you bleach acrylic?

 

[Matt724]

nobody knows?

 

[PostalPenguin]

Use a 1:20 bleach solution on the tank, let it soak for an hour then drain and let air dry. Once its dry you can be confident all the bleach is gone. Keep in mind that organic debris greatly limits bleach's effectiveness so remove all the substrate and scrape as much algae off.

At that concentration I doubt acrylic will be damaged but I'd check to make sure.

 

[Toby_H]

a 75~80% bleach solution is insanely strong.

A 10% belach solution will be strong enough to kill anything you will need to kill and will not be nearly as harsh on you nor the acrylic.

I do know that a 10% bleach solution will not harm acrylic. I doubt a 75~80% solution would, but I cannot say for sure as I've never tried such for myself.

As suggested you will want to physically remove as much of the dried algae as you can and just use the bleach solution to kill the little leftovers you can't scrap out.

 

[Matt724]

thank you for your answers PostalPenguin and nc_nutcase