I have a tank that I half way tore down because my fish passed away from what I think was velvet. Right now it has live plants in it. I want to sanitize the tank and set it up again. I have no idea how to sterilize the plants. I don't think simpily rinsing them will remove any parasites. Please help me.
For all the other things in the tank I rinsed them with scalding hot water and let them air dry. Is this enough?
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For any other things in the tank:
if they can be, boil them. Rinse others under hot water and scrub with an old toothbrush or a nailbrush or something (never to be used again)
Plants:
As someone else said, go ahead and toss them if they weren't too pricey, anything under 6 dollars or whatever you feel is good.
If you want to save the other plants, then just soak them in nuke-warm water for 10 minutes, then gently scrub them with a sponge (unused, no detergents or soaps on the sponge) I'm sure that the plants will be fine with just a quick scrub. Velvet parasites will die if they do not have a host. I'm sure they'd all die off by the time you've re-set up your tank and cycled it.
If you can, boil any filter media, too. Take out all of the substrate and boil that if you can, scrub it very well. Scrub the filter out, too, so there's no junk in your filter that any parasites could be living in.
You should be good if you do all of this.
Hope this was helpful, and good luck re-setting up the tank!
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I've sterilized my plants in two different but both effective ways.. One is with hydrogen peroxide and the other is a bleach dip.. The bleach dip is a ratio of 1:10 (bleach to water). Google both methods and you'll be enlightened to the process.
Del Rey
if the plants are not worth hundreds of dollars toss them,