I'm curious, we've had our first two goldies die from internal infections, and we plant live plants in the tank. I've read on some websites that we need to wash the plants in potassium permangenate before planting them in the tank - is this absolutely necessary? I just bought some expensive moss balls for the tank, and am afraid that the solution is going to kill them. Please advise. I'd hate to think that our plants harboured nasty parasites that ended up killing our goldies. I still have no idea how they contracted those infections, but they died within 1.5 months of each other.

fw

Hi fishywomble

I have a plant aswell and have no idea how to disinfect it
Some use a bleach solution but I am scared to do that

What I did is isolate it a container (one of my spare tupaware bowls) in dechlorinated water. let it get plety of light and leave it there for 30 days...changing water every couple of days.....I am nearly at end of QT
This way anything on it will die without a host, as for bacteria I have no idea...my fish had bacterial problems too so the plant was removed during treatment.

I hope somone will reply to your question as that will answer mine..I am scared to put the plant back incase any bacteria remain.

The mild bleach solution is a good idea, so is potassium Permanganete, if you can find some. I leave plants in a bucket of PP overnight.

I have always used a bleach solution then rinsed them in water for along time then rinsed them in water with plenty of dechlorinator as bleach is a chlorine and my fish and plants are just fine.

I have about 20 Marimo balls - I used PP to disinfect them as I felt bleach was too damaging. I put them in for thity minutes and rinsed them very well - they are absolutely fine. PP is much gentler than bleach! It is up to you if you want to disinfect or not but I would highly recommend it. I would not ever put a plant in my tank without a PP bath first. It is easy to disinfect so I figure it is just that little bit more assurance that everything will be OK!