Freezing objects to sterilize them!

[alberto]

Hi All

About 15 years ago I read in a book or magazine that you could freeze objects like tree bark, branches and other things to kill germs and parasites before they are put in the aquarium or terrarium.
Has any one here ever heard or read about doing such a thing? I personally think that it will work but have never try it.
But I have freeze food for my newts may times.

 

[jonathan]

I'm not a newt expert but I know many creatures from insects down to single cell organisms can survive being frozen. Extreme heat (boiling) denatures some proteins and is generally much more lethal.

 

[alberto]

Hi Jonathan
I strongly agree with you about boiling been far better at killing germs. I have use the boiling method for hard things like rocks before and the baking method for soil.
But I think that freezing soft things like small pieces of tree bark and small twigs and small branches for several weeks could work. It is also possible that boiling soft things like the once that I just describe could be damage or destroy by boiling them.
Thank you for sharing you thought on the matter!
Best wishes to you!

 

[frank]

Hi Alberto,

Unfortunately, freezing is DEFINITELY NOT a good way to decontaminate materials. If you are lucky, you will kill some microorganisms (eg parasites). Most microorganisms will not be eliminated by freezing.

 

[john]

The CDC's Tropical Diseases branch, just down the road from me, keeps all their really nasty bugs in -80 F freezers.

It's a fairly common practice in microbiology. Just keeps them quiet till they need them.

 

[roy]

Freezing is helpful to kill mites, spiders, earwigs etc.
But thats something else than sterilizing.

 

[edward]

It may help to kill some invertebrate species but there are a large number of invertebrates (particuarly from temperate) regions that can to different extents tolerate freezing so I wouldn't count on it for this use. On other forums there have been discussions on using dry ice to fill enclosures with CO2 for several days to kill off some invertebrate species with good results.

Ed

 

[roy]

If you can get dry ice that will work indeed but it is often hard to get.
It is true many invertebrates can survive freezing. If you freeze something you find in winter it won't help you but if you do it in summer most invertebrates will die as the did not have tome to adept. It's not a perfect method but it helps to reduce the change of introducing spiders, centipedes etc. etc.