[Mousie]

I'm sorry to hear about your fish.

Generally I never recommend keeping anything porous from a tank where an inhabitant has died from unknown causes. Boiling does not kill Mycobacterium Marinum.

 

[Mousie]

I am for sure going to toss the plants, though I am sad about it because they are nice plants and I spent a pretty penny on them (well, a pretty penny for me, anyway, lol).

But I do want to keep the driftwood if I can. It's a really nice piece.

There's no way to kill Mycobacterium Marinum (fish tuberculosis) unless you soak the entire piece of wood in 91% Isopropyl Alcohol for roughly 10 to 15 minutes. And unfortunately there's no 100% way to ensure that your fish did not pass away from myco without a vet testing the fish.

The choice is of course yours to make.

 

[Mousie]

So bleaching the tank is not enough either?

Bleach does not penetrate the cell walls of the myco bacteria.

 

[Mousie]

How am I supposed to sterilize the tank, silk plants, filter, etc., then?

When I lost two very expensive groups of micro fish in a brand new 6G Fluval Edge with plants, Tahitian moon sand, driftwood, rainbow rock, etc. etc. etc. to fish tuburculosis I tossed everything except the tank and the filter housing. Those I soaked in 91% Isopropyl Alcohol. I have yet to this day been able to bring myself to use that tank or that filter. It is collecting dust in the basement, and my heart hurts every time I walk by it to go do laundry. I lost hundreds of dollars after only having them 6 months (it took that long for the Myco to even show up). I was heartsick that I had to throw so much out, and even more heartsick that regardless of my efforts I could not save a single fish. That gutted me, and I almost said screw it and sold all my aquatic stuff and fish.

Having pets is not a cheap endeavor by any means. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

 

[Mousie]

http://www.brightsurf.com/news/headl...obacteria.html

This source in of itself is an article on an abstract that I believe came from here (you can find other write ups on this)

http://mbio.asm.org/content/5/2/e00013-14.abstract

Here is a full length article of one study:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3940030/

It must be full strength to do any good.

None of those articles have anything to do with mycobacterium marinum. Human tuberculosis is completely different from aquatic tuberculosis. Vinegar will not kill aquatic tuberculosis.