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Accidentally cleaned tank decorations with soap

L

LTS

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Hi everyone. So without thinking we cleaned our tank decorations with dish soap. We rinsed them extremely thoroughly afterwards, beyond the point at which we felt there was any chance there was any soap residue remaining.

We realised about 30 hours later that this was a very bad idea. We ran a full test of the water to see if any soap residue had messed up the levels, but everything was exactly as it should be. Nevertheless, we've just done a ~30% water change.

Our two-year-old axolotl seems fine, looks okay, behaviour completely normal as it has been since yesterday when we put the tank decorations back in.

Should we be worried? Anything we should be keeping an eye on? Any other precautions we should be taking?

Thanks!
 
Otterwoman

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I think if you've thoroughly washed it and rinsed it and soaked it in hot water after the soap it should be OK.
 
L

LTS

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Thanks. We didn't soak in hot water but rinsed in warm water and scrubbed with a non-soapy finger for probably 1 minute per item to try get all traces off.

He's still absolutely fine this morning, and there are no visible traces of the detergent in the water. Is it safe at this stage to say "lesson learned" but otherwise stop worrying, do you think? It's been almost 48 hours since the 'incident'.
 
Purpletotodile

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From what I've read the best thing would be to clean them with vinegar, rinse, and repeat about 4 times. If you happen know someone who works with water testing you could put the decor in dechlorinated water for about a week and bring it to them because usually people working in those fields have more accurate testing kits that can detect way more than the ordinary ones you buy in the store.
I've never had this problem before, but I hope I gave good advice.
 
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