# Cleaning Live Plants



## leafgirl115 (Jun 24, 2010)

Hey guys I need to clean out my tanks and bleach them but am unsure how to clean the live plants? Any tip?


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

what I do is fill a bucket with tank temp water, add plants and a little bleach. The general rule is 2 to 5 minutes depending on the plants, thin stem plants are 2 min, really thick plants 5 min. vals are quite sensitive, 2 min is recommended

I then drain, rinse a few times and then refill and add lots of dechorinator to remove the rest of the bleach.

If the plants were covered in algae, you will then see all the algae hairs turn white, they are dead and will go away in a week or so


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## leafgirl115 (Jun 24, 2010)

Thanks for the advice was not sure how long to keep the plants in there. Hopefully this cleans my 20g algae from the plants. 

I also bleached my 10g tank that had some disease go through it. Making sure everything in that is ok before placing new fish in it.


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## TorontoPlantMan (Aug 16, 2013)

Instead of bleaching the plants and having to pull everything up you can alternatively just cover the tank with a blanket from all sides so no light gets in; leave it for a week and all your algae will be gone.


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

blacking out the tank work to, very good for BGA outbreaks. Your plants are fine without light for a week and will bounce back quickly


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