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How do you mothball equipment temporarily?

628 views 7 replies 4 participants last post by  Linwood 
#1 ·
And no, I mean "mothball" in the figurative sense.

I have a 30g shrimp tank with large canister filter which I'm giving up on as a shrimp tank, and will save it for when I need a nursery or QT.

It's cycled of course, and media fairly dirty, etc.

So what should I dispose, what can I clean and reuse, and how clean? Most is fairly obvious and only the last below worries me a bit....

Tank, hoses, canister plastics are obvious and I will clean, chlorox, rinse, etc.

Substrate I plan to wash and treat with chlorox and wash.

How about mechanical media, specifically some pretty nice sponges? Chlorox them as well? Will that break down the sponge? Just rinse and leave some organic matter there, figuring it will rot when re-wet and be food and start the cycle?

Fine media I'll probably just replace.

And yes, no soap. Check.

But... Seachem Matrix, I have at least a liter, maybe two in there. I hate to toss it. Chlorox it to try to burn off organics down in the pores? Just rinse it and leave it?

What's the best way to preserve Matrix?
 
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#2 ·
Where ever I completely break down a a tank I bleach it.

After removing all of the fish and plants I add the bleach. Keeping all of the filters, heaters, substrate, etc running and in the tank.

I add in enough bleach to make a 1:500 solution. I then run the tank overnight. Bacterial death takes time with any disinfecting agent. So a quick rinse does very little, especially with highly porous material. If the bacteria have formed a booking it takes even longer.

I then drain and rinse the tank one time and haul everything outside and rinsing it down with the garden hose. And the tank angled downward. Remember it is better to rinse rather than I'll and drain the tank. Dilution factors are an interesting math.
 
#3 ·
I agree with @THE V, just go through and add bleach to the tank post removal of living matter.

I generally only keep material that can either be regenerated or repopulated. What does that mean, products like Purigen I keep as long as they are not years old as the can be regenerated. I know some people do it, I don't. As for repopulated this is in regards to bio media. If you have biological media rinse it really well and let it dry and store it in the canister. Mechanical (sponges) and chemical (denitrifying media or carbon) I just junk. It's cheap enough to replace and you might as well run new media for a new setup.
 
#4 · (Edited by Moderator)
The V and Tihsho, thanks. I'll junk most mechanical media, but I invested in some really nice thick sponge material a while back (these are SunSun 404B's, so there's a huge amount of room to fill), hope to keep those.

So you bleach the bio media as well. OK, that's good to know.

Glad you mentioned that approach, I like the idea of sanitizing first, even though it seems backwards in some ways. It's a lot easier to just add bleach to the running tank than to disassemble, clean, reassemble, and then run again. And thanks for the recommendation of strength -- I would have started much higher I think. In fact with a lot of bio matter 1:500 really still seems a bit low, but in looking at recommendations for things like water systems, maybe not. Bleach is pretty strong stuff.

Thanks. Will start soon (well, as soon as I save some snails -- not that I need more snails, but I feel bad dousing them in bleach).

Just for clarity, the 1:400 is final concentration, starting with bleach that is already about 1:12 (8.25%), so you are diluting about 33:1 for household bleach?
 
#5 ·
I do much the same but do see if the small stuff like sponge is worth saving. The amount of bleach to use is a guess as it can depend on what is needed. But I do the process both when shutting down as well as starting up again. If a tank has been a QT and I want to shut it down and be certain that the bad guys are killed, I use a different mix than if it is a case where I'm shutting down but do want to kill all the snails and put the tank back in operation soon. Snails can close their shells and survive a small nuke so they take more if I really want them gone. My thoughts on the filter floss/ sponge types is that I leave them and then when I pull them out after dry, I look at whether they are good or not. But I do extra work to make sure they are dry all the way through before sticking them somewhere to store. Even though I will bleach them again when they have been stored long term, I like to avoid the huge growth. Just running all the equipment and tank during the bleach soak is an easy way to get it all done. It takes the color out of wood but the color comes back pretty quick in all the wood I've used.
 
#6 ·
PlantedRich - thanks. No wood here. The snails (as so often the case) were just accidents when I moved the plants in, this was supposed to be a shrimp tank (I found I am no good at shrimp). I pumped about half the water out and then added bleach, only problem is the spray bar is splashing a bit, but I have a good plastic cover and have covered the remainder with a towel to keep any splash from making the room a bit too much like a locker room.

Thanks all. My main concern was the Seachem Matrix, and it sounds like no one worries about bio media being harmed with chlorine.
 
#8 ·
PlantedRich - indeed. I go through a lot of chlorine here, between boats and house (in Florida where mildew is a crop), and fish stuff. Usually what I ruin are pants, thinking "I can do this without it splashing".

I'm saving them all for when the 60's comes back and tie dye is back in!
 
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