[EliteFishy]

I had to bleach my whole tank after a losing a algae battle. I bleached all my tank but how do I bleach my substrate. Im afraid that I wont be able to get rid off all the bleach in my substrate and will hurt my fishes and plants.

 

[epicfish]

Bleach it, rinse it, rinse it, rinse it, rinse it, rinse it with de-chlorinator (Prime), rinse it, rinse with de-chlorinator, rinse it.

What substrate is it?

 

[Chrona]

You may need to soak it in some kind of acid buffer for a while too, since bleach is very alkaline. The Purigen I had was causing the water I tested it on to go to over 8.0 pH after I renewed it with bleach. I overshot the acid buffer dosage though, I guess, because afterwards the purigen lowered pH by 0.5 for about a week

 

[EliteFishy]

Bleach it, rinse it, rinse it, rinse it, rinse it, rinse it with de-chlorinator (Prime), rinse it, rinse with de-chlorinator, rinse it.

What substrate is it?

I have Flourite.

 

[Betowess]

Four or five complete water change with a double dose of prime on the first two with about four days time and you should be fine. If you can still smell bleach, do it some more.

But do you know what type of algae, or was it a lot of different? Some might not require nuking the flourite.

 

[spypet]

I would not bother bleaching substrate because it's so porous.
you only need to replace the top centimeter exposed to light,
not all of it.

 

[EliteFishy]

Four or five complete water change with a double dose of prime on the first two with about four days time and you should be fine. If you can still smell bleach, do it some more.

But do you know what type of algae, or was it a lot of different? Some might not require nuking the flourite.

I had all sorts of algae: Clado, BBA, slime algae, staghorn, and hair algae.

 

[epicfish]

If you had clado, I'd bleach all of it and not just the top layer.

 

[Betowess]

Yeah, and after some days the bleach will degenerate on its own to some degree. You'll be fine with some time and prime and lots of water changes...

FWIW, I put a whole 6 quart container of bleach in a 90 gallon for over a day to kill a red algae. That was too much. Eyes were watering with windows open and ceiling fan on. But about 4 or 5 water changes (as I mentioned before) had the tank smelling fine. I didn't do the substrate as I re-started with new flourite (with mulm).

Interestingly, after the re-start the red algae came back to some degree, but now is going away, quickly too!