A good outcome after test

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MattW

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So I have a thread algae issue in my 60L tank. My Rotala rotundifolia has been impacted the worst, with every stem basically becoming a fuzzy green stick. I was considering doing a dip of some sort to see if the algae could be removed without doing tedious manual removal. I saw great results for bleach and hydrogen peroxide dips online; however, I don't have any at the moment. I did see one older Reddit thread mention Isopropyl alcohol as a potential choice in a plant dip. Luckily, I still have a 1L bottle of 99%! The thread did mention they used 70% but didn't mention what ratio the mixture was.. So I decided just to try a couple stems in my own mixture. In the end, I went for 300ml of water, 125ml of Isopropyl alcohol. I left them for 4 minutes and then rinsed twice in old tank water. After rinsing, they did not look good. Some even looked shrivelled :lol: . However, after putting them in fresh water for 10 minutes, I noticed there was no thread algae! I've since planted them back in the tank and the stems have opened up and look healthy.

I do think bleach and hydrogen peroxide are probably a better option though. I think any longer than 4 minutes, those rotala probably would have snuffed it. Might also be a wise option to just buy new plants..
 
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I used a single dose of Ultra Life blue green slime algae remover to remove hair algae and it worked like a charm. No injury to fish or plants.
 

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