# Potassium Permanganate?



## Windmills (May 22, 2006)

So I have a 20 gallon tank overrun by hundreds of snails. I would like to dismantle this tank completely and move what is salvagable to my 80 gallon.

But how to do so without bringing over any snail eggs?

I heard about potassium permanganate, and I have a jar of the stuff (a powder) from the LFS, but there are no instructions on it!

Has anyone used this? and if so, what's the dosage?
On wood? (or should I just boil the wood?) 
How about potassium permanganate on plants?

Advice please!


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## Gump (Aug 2, 2006)

toss a few pennies in the tank, or get some meds with copper in them, it will kill all snails. just watch out if you have scaleless fish in the tank. but if you remove all the fish you can turn up the temps or add salt.


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## mr.dark-saint (Aug 16, 2005)

Gump said:


> toss a few pennies in the tank, or get some meds with copper in them, it will kill all snails. just watch out if you have scaleless fish in the tank. but if you remove all the fish you can turn up the temps or add salt.


Pre 1983 (if in US) after that it's copper plated zinc or just plain old copper wire or pipe in the tank. Or a loach (like the yo-yo and it's kin). 

If you just wanna move everything I'd move the fish in to the 80 gallon. Then get a bucket and put in all the decoration, rock and gravel of mixture of bleach and water. Boiled water will do the trick as well here (but may ruin decorations?).

I recon you have live plants and this was the initial introduction to your tank (and moving them may also introduce snails in the 80 gallon). And Copper in a planted tank is also not so good of an idea (or copper based solutions). 

I'd get some fish that eats snails that is not going to eat your pre-existing fish. 

So, what do you want to do? Move all the fish that may get eaten to the 80 gallon then place snail eating (anything eating fish) and let them go? Or move the fish bleach the whole lot (or place boiling water over the deco?)? Keep it as is and place a loach?


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## Puffer Pita (Jun 16, 2006)

Here are the instructions you need. PP cannot be added to the tank if it contains fish or livestock you don't want to kill in a terrible way or kill your biofilter. Treat all of your plants and decore BEFORE they are added to the new tank.
http://www.aquariaplants.com/plantdipsbaths.htm


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## harif87 (Jun 5, 2006)

I would be careful when using potassium permaganate. Its extremely reactive (P.P. + Glycerine = fire....just an example of its reactivity)stuff and if dosed wrongly could kill your fish. Having that said, you should only use P.P. if you are excersicing real caution. 

First off, you should never put P.P. straight into your tank. You should prepare a bath for whatever needs to be treated, and dip in the things that need to be dipped. As far as dosage goes, you should put as much in (with a little toothpick or cotton swab) untill the water turns a color between pink and purple. It is ideal to weigh out the stuff before adding since guaging by color is usually not as accurate as we wish. 0.05 mg/L or potassium permaganate is the safe dosage, but since most people dont have sensitive enough scales that can read .0005 grams of any substance, we have no choice but to use color as an indicator. You should keep the specimen in the solution for about 10 minutes. If your dipping fish that have open wounds, dont leave them in there for too long. If you do get P.P in the tank, i think a good way to neutralize it (and also get rid of the color) is by using 3% solution of hydrogen peroxide. Honestly ive never tried this but ive heard an alternative of using dechlorinator instead of hydrogen peroxide.

Another, safer, way to kill unwanted pests is by preparing a hydrogen peroxide (H2O2)dip. This is done by adding 1 mL of 3% H2O2 per 10 mL of water. Dip for the same amount of time you did with the potassium permaganate solution. 

Again make sure to excercise extreme caution because any miscalculations in the dosage of P.P. or H2O2 can cause death to any of the things you are dipping. I hope this helped


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## Windmills (May 22, 2006)

Thanks so much for all your advice! I am definitely dipping outside my tanks, in a seperate bowl...is it ok if it's a plastic bowl? I am aware it will stain, that's ok.

I am going to dip my plants. As far as the wood, I will boil it. Nothing else will be tranfered over to the 80 gallon besides the above things.

The fish will be transferred directly - I'm not going to dip them!! 

Thanks again for all the advice, if there's something else you think I should know before I try this stuff out, let me know!


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## harif87 (Jun 5, 2006)

The plastic bowl shouldnt be a problem. You know its good to dip newly acquired fish to rid them of any parasites or bugs. But good luck with the plants and wood


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## Guest (Sep 10, 2006)

depends on the kind of snails. Malaysian trumpet snails are the worst. at work we have dosed with copper, even double and triple dosed. they didnt die. boiled the gravel, they still were alive. loaches...you wish. only luck we have had was by drying the gravel out in the sun for a week or 2 before using it again. so i would find out what snails u have first.


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## Windmills (May 22, 2006)

They ARE Malaysian Trumpet Snails.


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## Guest (Sep 10, 2006)

yuck. in my eperience with them...they are very hard to get rid of. i have one customer that comes to get them because their puffer eats them, but ive never had puffers eat them before. they are the worst.


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## Guest (Sep 10, 2006)

They shouldn't be fed to puffers. The shells are usually too hard for puffers and can result in broken puffer teeth.


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