Starting again! help with potassium permanagante left over hair algae

[SammyW]

After a disastrous first attempt at Aquascaping I'm giving it another go. In a nut shell I think I was a bit too adventurous with my initial layout and the substrate collapsed mixing up the different layers I had used to create a beach effect and ended up with a brown mush. Then all that seemed to grow was hair algae and finally to add insult to injury my tank got over taken by snails before I even got to put a single fish in it! I ended up disconnecting everything and letting it sit as a green blob in the corner of the room for six months. After much research I'm starting again so I bought some PP to soak everything before starting again. As I do not have any fish to kill and only a couple of plants that miraculously survived the 6 month negelect (Anubias nana bonsai), I was going to soak everything in PP to make sure that there are no snails or eggs lurking before I start again next week. So could someone tell me the ratio of PP to use bearing in mind I do not need to be particularly gentle. Also will PP kill of any straggling hair algae? I appreciate hair algae is result of too much light and not enough co2 but if there is any left on anything I'm putting back in the tank does this give it a head start?

 

[alto]

Are you intending to re-use the substrate? or just intending the PP for filter clean, hardscape etc?

 

[SammyW]

Hi Alto. No I've thrown the substrate away, its literally to clean the tank and the equipment and the hardscape.

 

[alto]

I'll refer you to the Skeptical Aquarist PP article - an excellent source for all sorts of information

Beware the staining quality of this stuff - I'm guessing you picked up the powder

For this sort of "clean" I generally just run some bleach (1-2 hours to remove dried on grunge, or overnight), change out the water a couple times, then run 10 - 20X dose of dechlorinator to remove all bleach, then restart with fresh water ... there may be some residual odors remaining (from the anaerobic swamp state) - these can be cleared with a good dose of peroxide, followed by another water change, then set up with fresh water & start tank cycling etc.
Any remaining "limescale" can usually be cleared out with vinegar (or ignored )

A friend uses PP on occasion - just dumps in enough for a deep purple solution, leaves it a few hours to overnight, then clears away all the purple/pink with water changes etc
- but you can end up with some determined staining depending on tank materials (stain will fade out eventually)

 

[alto]

I'd be inclined to dump any filter materials & just buy new sponge etc

 

[SammyW]

Great many thanks.