Nooo!! Shrimp love algae! Test the water and make sure the parameters are good for shrimp and then let them loose in there. They’ll have it sparkling in no time
Bleach seems like overkill imo. I wouldn’t recommend bleach since you’ll have to be extra careful to rinse out any residue. I think it’s plenty to scrape the algae off the glass, get rid of organic waste, and give everything a good rinse/scrub.
If you want to sterilize with cleaning I’d use hydrogen peroxide instead, which in light breaks down to water and oxygen, so you wouldn’t have to dechlor after bleaching and it’d be safe inherently.
No, shrimp love to eat algae that’s free for them and if you don’t want it on the glass blocking your view use a cheap razor window scraper to peel it off into the water where it’ll become free floating food for them, obviously rinse the scraper thoroughly before using it as you should do with all equipment before using it on your fish tank and be very careful never to get any type of moisturisers, sprays or chemicals in your tank as this will kill your shrimp immediately
Also ramshorn or Malaysian trumpet snails will eat all of this algae off the glass no problem without you having to do anything as long as you don’t feed them and leave the algae as their food source, they don’t eat live plants unless there’s literally nothing else for them to eat. Mystery and rabbit snails are also a good choice
BROOO LMFAO😭 I’m sorry that’s rude but like bro it’s bleach. And it’s shrimp. Shrimp are the most sensitive fucks out there (and also regardless scrubbing the inside of a tank with bleach would literally mean you’d never be able to use it again with any living animal and possibly plant). Thank god you asked. Also, before you get shrimp I would suggest planting your tank more 🙂 they thrive in thickly planted (and established!) tanks with leaf litter and plenty of hides.
No way. Take anything out that you want to clean up and throw it in a 5g bucket with water and just scrub/rinse it well.
Do a solid water change and let your shrimp go nuts in there. Thats a ton of free food with minimal effort to you. Tank is already cycled and ready to rock in the state it is in. Don’t start over.
I’d definitely not bleach anything. I’d fill it up, remove some of the excess algae, add what you want, Substrate and hardscape, etc…and start whatever filtration you want to use and add shrimp and snails when the parameters are right.
hey lots of ppl are asking why i wondered about bleach…i will paste from one comment i made:
ive seen lots of well known youtubers bleach used fishless tanks to get rid of any harmful toxins, worms, etc and then get rid of the bleach itself so there’s no traces left. examples are GirlTalksFish, Aquarium Co-op, and Natural Aquaria. i was concerned about if that was necessary in my case and the overall consensus is that it’s not
i really appreciate everyone who took the time to educate me about this, thank you!!
dont bleach you have a well established aquarium full of algae and plants which is ideal for shrimp and snails, test the water parameters and do a water change. If you want to revitalize the tank and add shrimp i would recommend starting off with a few snails to clean and balance the tank and then adding shrimp later down the line.
You’ll destroy everything. Ecosystem gone. It will take months to get it suitable for a colony. Just scrap the algae off the glass, reduce light and water change if nutrients are too high
I have corys ghost shrimp feeder snails and an otto in one of my tanks and its the cleanest tank I have whenever I do a water change the old water doesn’t get cloudy till I rinse my sponge filter in it
There’s never a need for bleaching! Additionally you never know what residue may stick around and potentially hurt fish. Also, you already have an active bio column so I wouldn’t throw that away if I were you! Gut it if you want and scrub it down with either a scrub mommy or whatever you have on hand. Let it air dry in the sun.
What I personally do is use a credit card to scrape off the front panel of glass then leave the other three covered in algae for my shrimp. They most likely won’t clear out all the diatoms and hard algae on your glass but they appreciate being able to sit on the glass and graze. Also I noticed that Amazon sword has a lot of dead leaves, make sure to prune your plants often and remove dead plant matter. This allows your plant to focus on making new healthy leaves and decaying plant matter will cause really high nitrates. If you’re not already, I suggest root tabs and liquid fertilizer for your plants
You likely still have a lot of beneficial bacteria in there, so I would suggest you go a lot lighter on the cleaning. Certainly no bleach is needed. Just scrub down everything lightly to get rid of most of the algae, rinse the gravel a little, and put it back in as is. Don’t remove all the dirt and algae. You don’t want it squeaky clean, that would be a detriment to the health of your tank, despite how backwards that sounds. A little bit of dirt and algae is a healthy part of a cycled tank. I would even suggest setting up the filter again and letting it run for some days before changing the water and cleaning the decor. Could help jump start your cycle.
Do not bleach it.
The process you described less the part about bleach is 1000% better without the bleach.
Seriously please don’t consider bleaching it. The calculation that the bottle of dechlorinator has is not even going to come close to the amount you would need to remove actual bleach. Dechlorinator is designed to be used to remove the already Trace amounts of chlorine in tap water. Even adding a single drop of bleach to a pint of water, the amount of dechlorinator required to neutralize bleach would be on orders of Magnitudes more.
Normal tap water contains anywhere from 0.5 to 2 ppm of chlorine. That means for every Million drops of water there are, there is anywhere from a half drop to two drops of chlorine. A pint of water contains only 9460 drops of water, and I’m not good at math so I can’t tell you what the amount of chlorine would be, but suffice it to say it would be a fuck ton less than one DROP of chlorine.
So say you did make the mistake of spraying an item one time. An average sprayer can spray anywhere from 2-5 ml per pump. There are over 20 drops per ml of fluid, meaning that one pump sprayed something between 40-100 drops of bleach.
To neutralize that amount of bleach you are going to need something much more potent than your average dechlorinator, and getting the tank back to a completely balanced, chemical free state, might be very tricky.
You’d be better buying a new tank than bleaching an old one imo.
Scrub takes a few minutes then empty fill half with water and a little vinegar scrub again empty and dry if you have haze get a soft cloth. No bleach no cleanser of any kind, ever.
beep4321 
Bleach is… no. Just no. Balance the ecosystem.
Nooo!! Shrimp love algae! Test the water and make sure the parameters are good for shrimp and then let them loose in there. They’ll have it sparkling in no time
Bleach seems like overkill imo. I wouldn’t recommend bleach since you’ll have to be extra careful to rinse out any residue. I think it’s plenty to scrape the algae off the glass, get rid of organic waste, and give everything a good rinse/scrub.
If you want to sterilize with cleaning I’d use hydrogen peroxide instead, which in light breaks down to water and oxygen, so you wouldn’t have to dechlor after bleaching and it’d be safe inherently.
No, shrimp love to eat algae that’s free for them and if you don’t want it on the glass blocking your view use a cheap razor window scraper to peel it off into the water where it’ll become free floating food for them, obviously rinse the scraper thoroughly before using it as you should do with all equipment before using it on your fish tank and be very careful never to get any type of moisturisers, sprays or chemicals in your tank as this will kill your shrimp immediately
That tank is prefect for shrimp. It would take you 6-8 weeks to start fresh, you’re practically ready to add shrimp.
Do you have a line on freshwater breeding ghost shrimp?
I wouldn’t bleach ANYTHING you plan on keeping with living things, especially something so fragile as shrimps.
Also ramshorn or Malaysian trumpet snails will eat all of this algae off the glass no problem without you having to do anything as long as you don’t feed them and leave the algae as their food source, they don’t eat live plants unless there’s literally nothing else for them to eat. Mystery and rabbit snails are also a good choice
BROOO LMFAO😭 I’m sorry that’s rude but like bro it’s bleach. And it’s shrimp. Shrimp are the most sensitive fucks out there (and also regardless scrubbing the inside of a tank with bleach would literally mean you’d never be able to use it again with any living animal and possibly plant). Thank god you asked. Also, before you get shrimp I would suggest planting your tank more 🙂 they thrive in thickly planted (and established!) tanks with leaf litter and plenty of hides.
what? why would you bleach and scrub everything? your shrimp need a bioactive environment to survive
No way. Take anything out that you want to clean up and throw it in a 5g bucket with water and just scrub/rinse it well.
Do a solid water change and let your shrimp go nuts in there. Thats a ton of free food with minimal effort to you. Tank is already cycled and ready to rock in the state it is in. Don’t start over.
You’ve got shrimp heaven in that tank right now! I wouldn’t do anything other than making sure your KH & GH are ok, & let them at it!
I would add snails
I’d definitely not bleach anything. I’d fill it up, remove some of the excess algae, add what you want, Substrate and hardscape, etc…and start whatever filtration you want to use and add shrimp and snails when the parameters are right.
I’d call this an early headstart🙌🏼
hey lots of ppl are asking why i wondered about bleach…i will paste from one comment i made:
ive seen lots of well known youtubers bleach used fishless tanks to get rid of any harmful toxins, worms, etc and then get rid of the bleach itself so there’s no traces left. examples are GirlTalksFish, Aquarium Co-op, and Natural Aquaria. i was concerned about if that was necessary in my case and the overall consensus is that it’s not
i really appreciate everyone who took the time to educate me about this, thank you!!
Like others have said just add some shrimp and snails to the tank as is. The snails and shrimp will feast on the algae and decomposing plants.
dont bleach you have a well established aquarium full of algae and plants which is ideal for shrimp and snails, test the water parameters and do a water change. If you want to revitalize the tank and add shrimp i would recommend starting off with a few snails to clean and balance the tank and then adding shrimp later down the line.
Shrimp would be so happy in this as it is
Add water.
Wait.
Add shrimp.
Wait.
Enjoy shrimp.
😌
Never!
You’ll destroy everything. Ecosystem gone. It will take months to get it suitable for a colony. Just scrap the algae off the glass, reduce light and water change if nutrients are too high
Just scrap the glass and drop in the shrimp. that is their food.
why
Get one single small nerite snail, add and wait one day, problem solved.
DO NOT BLEACH PLEASE THAT WILL KILL EVERYONE IN THER WINCLUDIBG PLANTS AND EVEN IF YOU EMPTY AND REFILL THE TANK IS USELESS AND WILL KEEP KILLING
Never bleach bro use a razor blade and rough sponge to get rid of algae and then set it back up dawg
I have corys ghost shrimp feeder snails and an otto in one of my tanks and its the cleanest tank I have whenever I do a water change the old water doesn’t get cloudy till I rinse my sponge filter in it
Bleach also has soap and other things.
Nah, definitely don’t do anything so drastic.
After checking the water parameters and ensuring that they’re suitable for shrimps, just remove as much algae as you can manually.
Use tweezers for the long hair algae, and just scrape off those on the glass.
Chances are, you won’t be able to remove 100% of the algae, maybe 90-95%, and the remaining will be sufficient for shrimps.
Algae will slowly grow back too, becoming additional food sources for your growing shrimp population!
There’s never a need for bleaching! Additionally you never know what residue may stick around and potentially hurt fish. Also, you already have an active bio column so I wouldn’t throw that away if I were you! Gut it if you want and scrub it down with either a scrub mommy or whatever you have on hand. Let it air dry in the sun.
No. It’s algae. That’s free shrimp food. Get the water parameters in shape and dump em in.
Either use vinegar or just change the water but keep the algae shrimp love it.
What I personally do is use a credit card to scrape off the front panel of glass then leave the other three covered in algae for my shrimp. They most likely won’t clear out all the diatoms and hard algae on your glass but they appreciate being able to sit on the glass and graze. Also I noticed that Amazon sword has a lot of dead leaves, make sure to prune your plants often and remove dead plant matter. This allows your plant to focus on making new healthy leaves and decaying plant matter will cause really high nitrates. If you’re not already, I suggest root tabs and liquid fertilizer for your plants
Daphnia are good too instead of chemicals and snails. Shrimp r cool
Rage bait?
Def not. Start with water change, condition the water, run filter for 3 weeks, then add snails and very few shrimp…..see how they do.
Test water after 3 weeks first B4 you add shrimp.
Let us know how it goes!
You likely still have a lot of beneficial bacteria in there, so I would suggest you go a lot lighter on the cleaning. Certainly no bleach is needed. Just scrub down everything lightly to get rid of most of the algae, rinse the gravel a little, and put it back in as is. Don’t remove all the dirt and algae. You don’t want it squeaky clean, that would be a detriment to the health of your tank, despite how backwards that sounds. A little bit of dirt and algae is a healthy part of a cycled tank. I would even suggest setting up the filter again and letting it run for some days before changing the water and cleaning the decor. Could help jump start your cycle.
Clean it…..
Do not bleach it.
The process you described less the part about bleach is 1000% better without the bleach.
Seriously please don’t consider bleaching it. The calculation that the bottle of dechlorinator has is not even going to come close to the amount you would need to remove actual bleach. Dechlorinator is designed to be used to remove the already Trace amounts of chlorine in tap water. Even adding a single drop of bleach to a pint of water, the amount of dechlorinator required to neutralize bleach would be on orders of Magnitudes more.
Normal tap water contains anywhere from 0.5 to 2 ppm of chlorine. That means for every Million drops of water there are, there is anywhere from a half drop to two drops of chlorine. A pint of water contains only 9460 drops of water, and I’m not good at math so I can’t tell you what the amount of chlorine would be, but suffice it to say it would be a fuck ton less than one DROP of chlorine.
So say you did make the mistake of spraying an item one time. An average sprayer can spray anywhere from 2-5 ml per pump. There are over 20 drops per ml of fluid, meaning that one pump sprayed something between 40-100 drops of bleach.
To neutralize that amount of bleach you are going to need something much more potent than your average dechlorinator, and getting the tank back to a completely balanced, chemical free state, might be very tricky.
You’d be better buying a new tank than bleaching an old one imo.
Scrub takes a few minutes then empty fill half with water and a little vinegar scrub again empty and dry if you have haze get a soft cloth. No bleach no cleanser of any kind, ever.