Should Plants Be Quarantined Also?

[Islandvic]

I want to add a few low-light plants in my 75 gallon community tank.

I read through the sticky posts and there is a lot of great info! I will re-read the stickies again before making my selection.

This will be my first attempt. Although I have sand substate, I will probably use another substate in a pot for the plants at first. That way I can move them around if need be, until I can figure out how I want to arrange them .

Should the plants be quarantined first, to make sure there are no snails or other hitchhikers on them?

How should I go about inspecting the plant to look for pests? Or am I just being OCD about it.

I was going to attempt to buy 1 or 2 from Petsmart on a day they get deliveries.

I will be sticking to low-light and low-tech set up for now.

Thanks!!

 

[Repolie]

You can quarantine them, but you can also do a bleach or salt dip with them to get rid of pests.

 

[jjohnwm]

Not OCD at all. I think quarantining plants is at least as important as doing it for fish. Snails are almost always introduced with plants, and I can't be sure but I assume that there are some infectious organisms that could also travel that way.

There was a thread on here recently showing a dragonfly nymph that a member found in his/her tank. It almost certainly came in on a plant, probably as a very tiny specimen, but by the time they found the thing it looked about the size of a hamster! Okay, maybe not that big, but you get the idea.

I like to quarantine plants for at least a couple of weeks, and all kinds of interesting critters show up in that tank. I don't go to the extent of actually treating the plants in any other way, but nowadays I'll bet there's all kinds of mysterious potions available for use as a dip or to add to the quarantine water to help kill unwanted visitors.

edit: Repolie beat me to it. Bleach?

 

[Thunder_o_b]

I want to add a few low-light plants in my 75 gallon community tank.

I read through the sticky posts and there is a lot of great info! I will re-read the stickies again before making my selection.

This will be my first attempt. Although I have sand substate, I will probably use another substate in a pot for the plants at first. That way I can move them around if need be, until I can figure out how I want to arrange them .

Should the plants be quarantined first, to make sure there are no snails or other hitchhikers on them?

How should I go about inspecting the plant to look for pests? Or am I just being OCD about it.

I was going to attempt to buy 1 or 2 from Petsmart on a day they get deliveries.

I will be sticking to low-light and low-tech set up for now.

Thanks!!

I prefer sand. My plants did ok with gravel but do much better in sand with the proper additives.

 

[Repolie]

Repolie beat me to it. Bleach?

A diluted bleach solution can be a very effective way to get rid of pests.

 

[Rylan]

I found this a while back it lists different plant dips.



I used alum the last time. Worked for snails. Still ended up with some Rhabdocoela though. I know some plants are sensitive to bleach.

Hydrogen Peroxide is also an option, but again some plants can be sensitive.

Let me know what you end up doing. I have a bunch of plants coming in as well.

I’ll watch this thread to see what the wise ones have to say about a good course of action.

 

[Islandvic]

Thank you for all of the replies and the links!

When I pull the trigger, I will post pics and probably ask more questions.

I've never had live plants, so I would like to avoid some of the common problems that new plant keepers have!

Additional input is always welcome!

 

[APColorado]

My 125 gallon started snail free until I ordered plants from someone that wasn't a snail free tank.

Another option is buying TC (tissue culture) plants, guaranteed to be snail free.

 

[Mr. Kgnao]

I don't bother to quarantine plants, but I prefer snails in an aquarium and I'm not overly worried about diseases transfering from inverts to vertebrates. I definitely wouldn't dip plants though, I don't think it does much other than put stress on the plant; on this board alone there are plenty of threads with people complaining about having dipped plants in bleach, alum, etc.. and still finding snails in their tank.

 

[Jellibeen]

Good info here! I’ve been thinking about how to tackle this problem with damselfly eggs. Some came in on plants and killed off many of my shrimp.

 

[Coradee]

If you have inverts then I’d suggest always quarantining plants as you never know what they might have been treated with.
I learned this to my cost a few years ago, minutes after adding new plants after just a quick rinse & without quarantining I lost every single shrimp in the tank.
I always now quarantine for at least two weeks with regular water changes.

 

[gorejusdesign]

A diluted bleach solution can be a very effective way to get rid of pests.

Bleach dip is good. Using an Alum bath works well too

 

[Peter M]

When quarantining plants what exactly are you looking for though? There wouldn't be any outwards signs that it is hosting a harmful disease would there?

 

[gorejusdesign]

When quarantining plants what exactly are you looking for though? There wouldn't be any outwards signs that it is hosting a harmful disease would there?

I'm not so much concerned of the plants carrying disease as I am concerned about potential unwanted hitchhikers like pond/bladder/assassin snails/eggs getting into my tanks from new plants. I recently purchased ludwigia repens and quarantined it with an alum bath/soak for 2 hours and I found a damselfly nymph in it.

 

[Hikari]

Bleach dip works well for abubias types...they're tough as nails. Also, I've personally never had problems with Petsmart plants so long as you get the ones in the plastic containers/baggies, and not the ones in the fish tanks. I just give 'em a good rinse in tap water and plop them in the tank.