Decontaminating Ballast Tanks

[Oldmanrider]

I have a G21 and in the past have only used it on the lake which we live on. This season we are thinking of visiting other lakes and I am concerned about transferring invasive species. I have read that using water at 120 degrees to 140 degrees to rinse the tanks will kill off invasive species. Can anyone tell me if water at that temperature will harm the boats ballast system?
Also if you have other methods you can share that would be great.
Thanks

[SilentSeven]

Subscribed. This is an interesting question.

[99bison]

FWIW - The invasive species decontamination systems that are at some MN public landings are exactly that hot water setup.

[BasaltRMK]

All - echoing the comment above. CO requires decon on all our lakes, so we get deconned every time we we leave our local lake and return from Powell or the Gorge. They decon the ballast system and engine intake with a hotsy, I think the specs are a minimum of 120 degrees for 60 seconds or so. Been doing this for years, never had any issues.

[SilentSeven]

Just out of curiosity...how do they provide that much hot water (to flush the ballast tanks)? Love a picture of the "decontamination station".

[BasaltRMK]

At our 'lil mountain lake they have an ~300-gallon tank attached to the hotsy, which they constantly refill from the adjacent campground water spigot. They actually drilled a new well last fall just for the decon station, not sure if it's online yet. They do NOT fill the ballast tanks/bags the whole way - they only add maybe 30 - 50 gallons to each. Their theory being that the invasive species need moisture to live more than a few days, so if the upper portions of the ballast are not still wet they don't need to have the contact with the hot water. Back when I had a smaller boat with much less ballast, they used to fill the bags until they overflowed. In reality they should probably still do this, but given the amount of ballast newer boats carry I think they simply don't have the equipment capacity and are doing the best they can.

Our lake just opened for the season today, I'll take a pic of the decon setup when I head down next wknd.