Looking back voiceofvinyl obviously has a lot more experience cleaning records than I do. Tergitol would certainly be a reasonable additive to distilled water and it is quite true that certain fungi will grow on records. Down in Florida I saw many records that were stored in high humidity conditions destroyed by the stuff. You could see it on the records and sleeves not to mention smell it. I suppose if the growth were not that bad you might be able to bring them back. But in reality this is a record storage and handling problem. Records should be stored below 75 degrees in relative humidities no greater than 50%. They should be stored in clean plastic sleeves, upright under pressure by which I mean you should just have a little trouble getting another record in there. The classic orange crate works great until you can design record storage shelves which you can see in any Michael Fremer video. You should never leave your records flat or leaning. Ideally a record should go right from the shelf to the turntable preferably with a dust cover and grounded sweep arm
(
https://www.sleevecityusa.com/Antistatic-Record-Cleaning-Arm-p/tac-01.htm) then returned to to the sleeve and the shelf immediately after.
The grounded sweep arm has been downplayed by various members on this forum. It does two things. It sweeps incidental dust out of the way of the stylus and discharges the record while it is playing so that the record never collects a static charge. The static charge is created by the stylus rubbing in the groove. Play a record without the brush and if you position yourself in the light right, as you remove the disc from your table you will see dust fly right to the record along with smoke and anything else that happens to be in the air at the time. Play a record with the brush and nothing flies to the record. The only way to improve on this is to play your records in a clean room. The brush is a little finicky in ways. The spindle to bearing distance has to be just right or it will not track the record correctly. Same if it is not clean. I have a piece of felt stuck to the table that I wipe it off on between plays and every so often I'll clean the felt with alcohol and a standard record brush. In 50 years of doing this I have not found a more effective way of keeping records clean in my hands anyway. I do not have a record cleaning machine. No need for one. For the rare outside or used record I use a spin clean with distilled water and alcohol. Anbody who thinks isopropyl alcohol damages records....how should I be politically correct about this. How's about," is susceptible to Marxist marketing schemes."
I should also note in regards to my previous post that there are different kinds of brake cleaning fluid. The one I used was one of the old fashioned chlorofluorocarbon type (Freon). Some of the newer ones might melt your record.
