Killing Undesirables On Collected Plants

Two weeks ago I collected several species of plants from the central/upper Meramec river in central Missouri. I had them in a 2 gallons of old aquarium water under good lighting and treated with Clout at about double the recommended dosage. After a few days the water was clear and I noticed a number of Hydra attached to the side of the bucket. So I repeated the process several times over the two week period, changing the water out once and adding new water from the aquarium. The plants were doing fine but so were the hydra. Were the plants absorbing the Clout rendering it ineffective against the hydra? So... yesterday I gave up on the Clout and put the plants in another bucket to which I had added some bleach. 18 minutes later I happened to walk by the bucket and noticed that all the plants were already dead.
So what do you recommend for getting rid of hydra and any other undesirable critters that may be on your plants? If you use bleach what percentage?
I collected some new plants today and don't want to kill them all again.
An interesting (at least to me) side note. My first stop today was at a state park visitor center to see if they would mind me collecting some plants from near the boat ramp. They said this was not allowed in state parks but as I was talking to them a Missouri DNR naturalist overheard the conversation and we got to talking about native plants for use in home aquariums. He mentioned that I would be hard pressed to find any suitable native submergent plants near the ramps at any of the nearby public accesses. He said my best bet would be to find a spring branch feeding into the river and look for plants in this very cold water.
Do you think he was right? Does anyone have any tips on what areas of streams are most likely to have native species?
While at the visitors center I bought a book entitled something along the lines of "Native plants for Missouri Ponds". Even though it was written for land owners with ponds the book is supposed to cover most of the native as well as the introduced plants found in Missouri waters. I'll look through it this week to see what I've got in my collecting bucket this time. My fish are all native and I'd like my plants to be as well!
Mark

So what do you recommend for getting rid of hydra and any other undesirable critters that may be on your plants? If you use bleach what percentage?
I collected some new plants today and don't want to kill them all again.

My fish are all native and I'd like my plants to be as well!
Mark

I've often wondered this as well. And locating native plants would be a good thing to learn as well.

Tom

I don't know what Clout is but I've heard of people using potassium permanganate, hydrogen peroxide, and dilute bleach dips on planted tank forums to get rid of pests.

Here's a link I found on one thread just doing a quick search on Aquatic Plant Central:
http://www.aquariapl...ntdipsbaths.htm

Thanks letters, great link!
Mark

Here's a link I found on one thread just doing a quick search on Aquatic Plant Central:
http://www.aquariapl...ntdipsbaths.htm

I'll be honest, I usually don't worry about hitchhikers on plants. Any hydra that come it would most likely be eaten or swept up in the your filter (if you are using one).

In filterless tanks, I often find a great array of tiny critters crawling around on the glass (especially copopods), if there aren't small fish to eat them. I find them rather neat to watch.

i think that quarantine and disinfection are really important, especially if you keep any other livestock that you consider valuable.

a ~15 min in a dilute bleach solution (10 mil/liter, or thereabouts) has worked well for me. although it can burn the tips of leaves and roots, i have observed that plants recover quickly after such treatment.

a softer method that i tried recenently was a dip in ethanol/water solution followed by hydrogen peroxide. it seems to have killed all the hitchhikers, including algae, but did not affect the plants.

Quite true, I am much more careful with any livestock I am fond of.

On that note, I have learned never to keep your prized plants with prized livestock, so that I never have to medically treat one at the expense of the other.