I was having an algae problem...it started when my husband overfed the tank while I was gone for a week and staghorn took over much of the tank. BBA was taking over my driftwood. With a thorough cleaning and frequent water changes, both seemed to be under control, but there was proof they weren't gone. A patch of BBA here on my driftwood, some staghorn there...periodic removal wasn't working, by the end of another week I'd see both algaes popping back up again. While I know I need to work on underlying nutrient balance issues to truly fix this, today I wanted to find something that would at least allow me to view my tank without compulsively ending up wet to my armpit attempting to remove more of the same (although I still ended up wet, this was more satisfying than pulling it out). Enter Google. I read articles on nutrient balance (can't afford a CO2 setup at the moment), manual removal, bleach dips, Siamese algae eaters, Excel and hydrogen peroxide as spot treatments... Then I saw mention of an Oxiclean dip, but it was very vague on details (other than it oxygenates similar to peroxide) so I thought I'd expand my knowlege and dig deeper.
I already had a tub of the Oxi "free and clear of fragrances etc" lying around the house, so I looked up the MSDS. Active ingredients are sodium carbonate (aka washing soda, used in cleaning, cooking, and industrial applications) and sodium percarbonate which is crystalline compound of sodium carbonate and hydrogen peroxide, activated by water. So when you mix up that Oxi, you end up with Water, Peroxide, and Sodium Carbonate...and the peroxide futher dissociates into oxygen bubbles and more water. So your total byproduct is water, oxygen, and washing soda, which is why the company touts it as being so environmentally friendly.
So basically, instead of doing a peroxide spot treatment, oxiclean makes it easy to to a complete peroxide dip w/o having to buy jugs of the stuff or worrying about introducing peroxide to your water column. I couldn't dig up any information as to what dosage would be best, so I went with 2 scoops of oxi to a 5 gallon bucket of hot water (my driftwood is fairly large), which seemed relatively dilute as the container recommends up to 1 scoop per gallon for soaking laundry or cleaning patios. I dipped each plant (no roots of course) for about 10-15 seconds, then rinsed well before tossing in a bucket of dechlorinated water to soak til I was ready to put everything back in. I did this to Sunset hygro, anubias petite, java ferns, weeping moss, L. sessilflora, mayaca, watersprite, P. affine, and my chunk of cedar driftwood about 5 hours ago. No signs of either algae barring the little bit of BBA I missed in the scrubbing is now a vibrant magenta, the plants look great and the fish seem happy to have their cover back. The oxi seemed to flat out dissolve the staghorn without me having to severely cut back my plants and it was way easier to get it out of the moss this way (anyone who's picked algae from moss know what I'm talking about). I wish I'd thought to take a before picture, but heres a few afters...just imagine the mosses covered in an inch of brownish staghorn algae and you'll get it
. This may not be a permanent cure, but it did a hell of a lot better job cleaning the algae up in the meantime than I've been able to accomplish by hand alone.
I already had a tub of the Oxi "free and clear of fragrances etc" lying around the house, so I looked up the MSDS. Active ingredients are sodium carbonate (aka washing soda, used in cleaning, cooking, and industrial applications) and sodium percarbonate which is crystalline compound of sodium carbonate and hydrogen peroxide, activated by water. So when you mix up that Oxi, you end up with Water, Peroxide, and Sodium Carbonate...and the peroxide futher dissociates into oxygen bubbles and more water. So your total byproduct is water, oxygen, and washing soda, which is why the company touts it as being so environmentally friendly.
So basically, instead of doing a peroxide spot treatment, oxiclean makes it easy to to a complete peroxide dip w/o having to buy jugs of the stuff or worrying about introducing peroxide to your water column. I couldn't dig up any information as to what dosage would be best, so I went with 2 scoops of oxi to a 5 gallon bucket of hot water (my driftwood is fairly large), which seemed relatively dilute as the container recommends up to 1 scoop per gallon for soaking laundry or cleaning patios. I dipped each plant (no roots of course) for about 10-15 seconds, then rinsed well before tossing in a bucket of dechlorinated water to soak til I was ready to put everything back in. I did this to Sunset hygro, anubias petite, java ferns, weeping moss, L. sessilflora, mayaca, watersprite, P. affine, and my chunk of cedar driftwood about 5 hours ago. No signs of either algae barring the little bit of BBA I missed in the scrubbing is now a vibrant magenta, the plants look great and the fish seem happy to have their cover back. The oxi seemed to flat out dissolve the staghorn without me having to severely cut back my plants and it was way easier to get it out of the moss this way (anyone who's picked algae from moss know what I'm talking about). I wish I'd thought to take a before picture, but heres a few afters...just imagine the mosses covered in an inch of brownish staghorn algae and you'll get it
. This may not be a permanent cure, but it did a hell of a lot better job cleaning the algae up in the meantime than I've been able to accomplish by hand alone. 
