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Bleaching store-bought hides

smigon

smigon

Old enough to know better
I have a bunch of the ExoTerra hides which have a brown lacquer on them. I thought I had found some mites in Gus' viv the other day in his waterbowl, I did a full cleaning and bleach-boiling to all the decorations, hides and fully cleaned the viv with soap the a bleach rinse. I found out that if you boil these hides it burns all the lacquer off. It is now almost white.

I rinsed it very well and put it back in the clean viv, but he won't use it. I personally can't smell the bleach, but maybe there is a scent now that he misses or doesn't like.

I purchase the medium size as add-ons on my Amazon Prime account, they are like $3 (when you purchase other items totaling $25 or more) so I always throw a couple in my "cart". I just washed a new one with soap and water, rinsed it completely and he went right in and is happy again.

Just a heads-up if you bleach lacquered items, the snake may not like it anymore!
 
Thanks for the warning on the Exo terra hides.

I hope this is not a stupid question, and I know that you are very experienced, but did you dechlorinate?

I have tropical fish so I always have a bottle of Seachem Prime at the ready. When ever I use chlorine on anything that is used by a living animal, after rinsing it very well, I soak it for at least ten minutes in Prime at 10x the normal dosage which is 1 ml per 10 gallons. In other words, I use one ml per gallon to dechlor things that I've bleached in order to kill stuff.

Then you can rinse it again and let it dry thoroughly (at this point the amount of chlorine in my city water for the rinse doesn't seem to be a factor as long as you let it dry first)

I get my Prime in larger bottles (500 ml) than you find in many pet stores from Amazon, but you can get it at any better store that sells tropical fish supplies. It's extremly cost effective and very handy anytime you need to get rid of chlorine.

Again, apologies if you already know this, but if it helps one person who doesn't it was worth sharing.
 
Oops, I didn't see how old this thread was when I answered. Apologies for that, too. I try to watch that and missed it until after I posted. Because I'm new I am reading back several pages at times in order to learn.
 
No worries, I am still around and kicking! I just boiled them in plain water and rinsed them very well. I have since used it in another viv and he likes it just fine, so it just needed time to omit the odor.

And the reason you gave is the reason I posted this in the first place, it was something I didn't know and maybe I could save others from making the mistake that didn't turn out so bad after all!
 
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