# Potassium permanganate dip with moss?



## kevmo911 (Sep 24, 2010)

Bueller?


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## fresh.salty (Jul 2, 2010)

Cant help with the dosage but if you need a little of the KMnO4 I have some. If it's legal for me to ship I will, if not I'm sure someone here will soon tell me. lol

A little of that stuff goes a long, long way. Bought a Kg years ago and still have most of it.


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## H2OLOVER (Apr 29, 2010)

I use tap water and make the solution dark pink...soak for 15-20 sometimes 30 if im changing water and wiping the glass...i usually dont soak the roots of my swords...makes them change a brownish color


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## kevmo911 (Sep 24, 2010)

H2OLOVER said:


> I use tap water and make the solution dark pink...soak for 15-20 sometimes 30 if im changing water and wiping the glass...i usually dont soak the roots of my swords...makes them change a brownish color


So in your experience 15-30 mins in a pp dip is safe for plants? Any issues with more fragile ones?


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## Abrium (Jan 7, 2011)

Not too long ago people were using the 19/1 bleach dip but I know what you mean with moss, if it touches bleach it is allllll over with. Or is it? 

The exact same thing happened to me with a ball of java moss the size of a regulation football and there was no way in h#ll I was getting rid of it so I soaked it in bleach for 2 minutes @ a rate of 19 parts water and 1 part bleach. The moss went completely white, which usually means dead, but I took a chance and placed it right back in the tank and 2 weeks later it was completely fine. Here are the pics of it because I didn't believe it.

Right after being bleached and what you're going to want to do is use the lush green color of the java fern around the moss as your overall indicator of moss health:









Man that looks so bad, I mean I surely thought that with that amount of decay in my tank I was in for an ammonia spike and ultimately a massive staghorn outbreak but nothing happened. 

Now here is the SAME exact moss two weeks later. I wouldn't kid you on this because I love these plants and I put too much time and resources into them to completely lead someone in the wrong direction. Check this badboy out now:










In two weeks it not only flourished but more so than if I wouldn't of soaked it in bleach. So now you have a starting point and empirical proof that if all else fails you can use bleach. I would assume christmas moss would do better because the overall cell structure is one that is heavier than java moss.

One treatment that comes to mind that I am hearing about lately on this forum regarding the algae fight is doing the same bleach treatment but replacing the bleach with H202 which is brilliant and I don't know why I didn't do that first but I don't know what type of ratio or amount of dip time would be used. However, your doing it with H202 so the tolerance is GREATLY increased. I'd go the H202 route and if you do please keep us updated.

Cheers,
Abe


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