I just came across this product Physan 20 at the First Rays web site. I have been reading over what they offer while researching for both a vivarium I am planning, and also for some planned experiments growing some aquarium plants emersed. (Still have a lot of reading and thinking to do, so bear with me a moment here...

What I am curious about is if anyone has used anything like this to clean up any plants that have been hit with algae in one tank and where it would be nice to save it and get it ready for another tank without introducing the algae to the other tank.

In addition, it seems like a good idea to clean all aquascape type tools (scissors, tweezers) as well. I had not considered that before! I bet I have introduced algae that way already.

-Jason

Wow! That Physan 20 must be good for just about any use, including smelly feet! Seriously, those instructions would fit just about as well if it were just ordinary bleach, sodium hypochlorite, NaClO. I suspect that is what it is.

Algae spores are most likely everywhere, in the air, in the soil, in most water, etc. I doubt that it is possible to keep them out of our aquarium water. Whaat we can do is keep the conditiions in the aquarium such that the algae spores won't start growing. We can also kill any active algae on plants and other articles in the aquarium, using bleach, peroxide or Excel. Based on what Tom has been saying I am planning to use a spray bottle of Excel and water to spray any plant cuttings before I set them out in a new aquarium setup. Hardscape and filter plumbing in the tank I will just wash with a bleach/water mixture. As far as I know this is the best way to do this. The problem is to avoid being too lazy to do this, and I have been known to be that lazy.

Does it slice? Dice? Cut through that tomato after cutting up all your old iron radiators? Sorry, got caught up having just seen a Ginsu knife commercial... ;-)

And I *have* bleach, so I'll stick with that.