best way to clean my resevoir and hydroton?

[djkiller]

i just finished using my aeroflo and id like to hear some advice on the best way to sterilize everything

djkiller Reviewed by djkiller on 06-20-2008. best way to clean my resevoir and hydroton? i just finished using my aeroflo and id like to hear some advice on the best way to sterilize everything Rating: 5

[herbie the love bud]

Run some diluted 30% Hydrogen peroxide through the system. That will be perfect. Depending on your dilution, within a day you don't even need to take out the water, just add your nutes.

[stinkyattic]

If there is media that you will re-use, you can scrub it off with a vegetable brush and then put it in a tub of water with cannazyme and an air stone. Let it bubble for a few days, then strain out the mucky water, put in fresh water, and pH it to 6.0. Let it sit for a few more days until the pH stabilizes. Then rinse it off and you are ready to rock.

Herbie's system cleaning method is the best way to get all the other stuff that doesn't fit in your sink
I'm paranoid though, and I like to do a res change after my cleaning run.

[iamgrowerman]

If you really want to get medieval with your cleaning, a 10% bleach solution will kill the bad (and good) stuff back into the dark ages.

You just have to rinse and rinse and rinse to get the bleach out afterwards. Rinse until you're sure it's clean, then rinse again just to be safe.

Hydrogen peroxide works very well and is easier to clean up after than bleach, but bleach kills faster and more completely. If you have a virus or something hit your plants, it's better to be safe than sorry. Nuke the system with bleach, make sure everything is good and dead, and then clean up and start over.

H2O2 will probably get it all, but I don't want to worry about "probably" after something like that. For most situations though, H2O2 will be fine.

[hatecable]

Could you use the bleach solution and rinse a couple times then use the peroxide to help clean up the bleach?

[iamgrowerman]

I don't think that H2O2 would "clean" bleach. You pretty much just have to clean up bleach by washing it away with lots of water. Rinse it out 'till its gone.

2-3 rinses ought to be plenty. Adding peroxide after that won't hurt, but I don't think itd help that much either