New plant quarantine

[RonWill]

Hi all,
How often do you practice quarantine for new plants, be it from the LFS, farms or from friends?

Kwek Leong brought up a valid possibility of disease or parasites hitch-hiking with plants, so what's the best method to 'disinfect' them?

I've heard of some using salt or potassium permanganate dips but how effective are these really. What about damage to plants?

If I could, new purchases are left to soak in a spare tank but then again, crypts won't allow me that luxury since they'd melt before the quarantine period is due.

[stormhawk]

Ron, I quarantined some of the plants I got during the trip on Sunday with you and Kenny. So far no problems. I had soaked the vals in normal tapwater for about 2 days to see if there was any living animals in the dirt that came in with the roots. I found some funny casings on the leaves of the vals but these were just mud tunnels of some tiny larva. Most were dead by the time I brought back the vals. The crypts remained alive in the bag for 2 days as well and are doing fine in my tank.

As long as there's nothing on the leaves, i.e. eggs or whatnot, and the roots are free of dirt, there should be no problems. *Touch wood* Nothing has cropped up in my tank so far, no deaths seen and even the two little Indostomus are FAT and HAPPY. To me, a sign of problems would be me seeing less and less of my hastatus corys. :wink:

As for the PP/Salt baths, I think there's some use to it. In fact some people have told me that soaking plants in a weak PP solution for about 30 minutes should kill most pathogens living on the roots/leaves of the plants. Not sure about the effects on the plants though.

Plants grown emersed in mud/soil enriched with chicken droppings should always be quarantined. If the mud/soil is somewhat moist then there is a danger of introducing water-borne bacteria living in the moist conditions. That may be the reason why some countries do not allow the import of live plants unless their roots are free of ALL soil particles.

[FC]

I don't practice quarantine at all. However, I wash new plants thoroughly with running tap water and then plant them straight into the tank's gravel. The only problem I encounterd with this practice is occassional free snails . For algae infested plants, I normaly discrard them or treat them with diluted chlorine.

[Green Baron]

I am lazy so I usually just rinse them and throw them into a small quarentine tank with tap water for 2 days before I plant them.

This is what I read from Internet (can't remember where I got it from) on how to disinfect plants :

Wash and rinse the plants under running tap water to get rid of all visible muck. Trim the roots so that they are about 1 inch in length.

Buy, 1/2 liter of Robin Bleach.
Add 50 ml of bleach to 1.95 liters of water.
Put this mixture in a large plastic bag.

Now add your plants to this bag and shake them thoroughly for a few minutes.

Stem Plants - 2 minutes.
Moss etc., - 1 minute.
Hardier Plants - 3 minutes.

Adhere to the time limits. Remove the plants from Bleach mixture and throughly rinse them under running tap water.

This will get rid of all algae and unwanted critters that come with the plants.

Plant them in the aquarium. The plants will recover in a few days.

I have not tried it myself !

[Slaigar]

I would not recommend the bleach method unless you are desperate to get rid of algae. Some sensitive plants can really take a beating from the bleach.

Personally, I am too lazy as well to quarantine. Luckily though, the bulk of the plants I got come from Tropica. I just got to keep an out for algae/snails from the LFS.

Though if I were going to set one that is chemical free, I would try placing the plants in tank with dwarf puffers(Tetraodon travancoricus) and a bunch of scavengers (loaches or SAE's). Dwarf puffers can easily get rid of a colony of snails and are plant safe. The scavengers will hopefully clean the roots and plant of all of the critters. SAE's can get the hair algae. Shrimps might be able to replace the scavengers but then you can't keep the dwarf puffers.

[|squee|]

Here is another method that I have not tried myself too, since i do not know where to get the ingredient: Potassium Permanganate.

I read somewhere that disinfecting new plants will be to soak them in a very diluted PP solution for a few hours.

[zmzfam]

You can get the Potassium Permanganate crystals from pharmacies such as Guardian Pharmacy.