Thread: My First system
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Old 08-10-2011, 06:34 PM
jamromhem jamromhem is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Central Florida
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Well.. The infection in the system came back.... This time I went at it full force... To shock the system I dropped about 64 oz of 3%H2O2 into the system for about 24hours... It did a good job of clearing things up. To further shock it after the 24hours. I dropped about 5 ML of bleach into the system (Bleach and H2O2 react to make salt water lol.) So I tried to play a different medium on the infection to try to make in inhostitable.

After all that changing chemestry in the res to try to make the life of whatever was growing difficult. I disassembled the entire system, sprayed it and scrubbed it with a 20ppm bleach solution. Then reassembled and ran it with about a 50:50 bleach solution (extremely strong). Rinced and scrubbed. Then sprayed every inch down with isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) and let dry. (I sealed the room because it burned the nose bad) :P

With hope the airborn fumes I had trapped in the room helped calm anything in the air as well.

While all that was going on I moved the plants into a similarly sterilized germination tray with a tall dome. and they have gotten hourly sprays with about a 10ppm bleach solution. I thought it would killt eh baby plants, but they have held up to it very well. They actually seem to be handling it better than when I used H2O2 to try to flush it out. I got a drop of H2O2 on the leaves and it burned the leaves, but the bleach solution I am able to spray on then rinse off with water and the leaves seem unaffected by it. I am sure a stronger solution would do more damage though.

In addition to all that... I purchased a UV sterilizer from the pet store that is rated for 50 gallon tanks. So with hope that will help a lot lol.. With all this trouble the plants are still doing great, and growing well.. I have 5th tiny leaves on a lettuce plant and more forming. I can't wait for the leaves to start getting bigger though.
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