I have a marineland 5 galllon bow front that has been sitting outside for months. This was given to me used and now I am finally gona set it up. My question is about the bio-wheel being dried out and then the tank collected rain water and then froze with the wheel laying in the ice. Would there still be anything alive on it that could hurt my fish? Or can I just drop it in and not worry about it? Oh and its been below freezing here for weeks.
does freezing kill bacteria on bio-wheel
- Thread starter monstertruck
- Start date
Hello and welcome to MFK!
The bio wheel should be OK...just rinse it well. There isn't anything beneficial left for sure, so rinsing won't hurt at this point.
You need to check out the tank carefully though. Even just a small amount of water that is allowed to freeze could cause all kinds of stress on the joints. I wouldn't be surprised if the bottom is cracked.
Good luck...
The bio wheel should be OK...just rinse it well. There isn't anything beneficial left for sure, so rinsing won't hurt at this point.
You need to check out the tank carefully though. Even just a small amount of water that is allowed to freeze could cause all kinds of stress on the joints. I wouldn't be surprised if the bottom is cracked.
Good luck...
Freezing won't kill bacteria, IMO would be safer to give it a bleach wash 5 minutes work and a lot safer than just dropping it in the tank.
Yeah rinse it off and run it for a few weeks to build up a new colony.
And do not use alot of bleach maybe one table spoon mixed with a gallon of water is enough to sterilize it. Then rince very very very well.
And do not use alot of bleach maybe one table spoon mixed with a gallon of water is enough to sterilize it. Then rince very very very well.
Household Bleach (Sodium Hypochlorite) in the concentration used to clean something (say 1 tsp per gallon) is way more concentrated than the tap water (which has Chlorine or Chloramine added) that dehlorinators are made for. I wouldn't skip the rinsing stage!
