Cleaning an old tank

[cginflorida]

I've decided to set up my old 10 gal for my betta and 2 otos until I can get a much larger tank going, in the near future.

The 10 gal has been sitting in my garage for a few months, it still has some old algae on it. Its last resident, a black molly, died of dropsy (bloat).

My question is, do I need to clean it with bleach, or is that not necessary. Will just water do the trick, along with scrubbing the algae off?

What about white vinegar? I've never seen that mentioned anywhere, but that is an effective non-toxic cleaning agent for other things. Has anyone ever used vinegar?

 

[Strikh]

I've never heard of using vinegar, but I'm a newbie at this hobby. From what I've read, though, it would be best to clean it with a dilution of bleach water. 20:1 or something like that...

Someone please correct me, before I kill this person's fish!

 

[flipz]

Well I typed this up and then AA decided to die for a minute and it didn't post. Hah. Anyways.

Use a VERY weak bleach solution. Let it sit, and then rinse, rinse, rinse, RINSE. And when that's done, rinse some more! Make sure and not use any abrasive sponges/scrubbers. If not all the algae will come off, the best thing to use is an algae scraper from the LFS. They are tough like a scrubbing pad, but won't scratch your tank. Hope that helps!

-brent

 

[deli_conker]

Bleach water is good for cleaning and disinfecting the tank. Afterwards rinse about 10 times more than you think you need to. Following this you'll want to use dechlorinator on it with a little bit of water added. Slosh this around in your tank making sure to coat all surfaces. I've also heard of people putting dechlor in a spray bottle with some water to dilute it and applying it this way.

White vinegar is also good for cleaning glass. I use this for cleaning streaks and water stains. It's also good for removing barnacle stuff from saltwater tanks and any other calcium carbonate based thing you want to remove.

I recently bought a used 30 gal. I did bleach, water, vinegar, water, dechlor. This tank used to be a SW tank, so it took more work to get rid of all the salt creep that was on the inside of the frame.

Being thorough always pays off in the end...

 

[oscarbreeder]

I use white vinegar to clean my tanks.
I still rinse them well but Im affraid if I use bleach I wont get it all rinsed and will kill my fish.

 

[cginflorida]

Well, I went ahead and used a weak bleach solution - about 1 cup in 10 gallons. Let it sit for about an hour, with the filter parts sitting in it. Then I scrubbed, and rinsed and rinsed and rinsed and am letting everything air dry. Before I put the fish in, I plan to rinse again with dechlorinator in the water, empty that out and fill it up again, with more dechlorinator (AquaSafe), before I put the fish in.

oscarbreeder, does the white vinegar do the trick even in tanks that have had disease? That would be great, because this bleach thing scares me. 8O

 

[oscarbreeder]

Im not sure on that part as I havnt had a tank with any diseases in it.
Just a few old dirty ones.

The bleach thin scares me too...LOL

 

[Aquafriend]

I've been told that oxyclean is good to use. It still needs to be rinsed well, but is safer than bleach, cleans really well, and doesn't contail soap products. Anyone else heard of this?

 

[cginflorida]

I've been told that oxyclean is good to use. It still needs to be rinsed well, but is safer than bleach, cleans really well, and doesn't contail soap products. Anyone else heard of this?

All those oxygen cleaners that are non-toxic are great just for cleaning, but they don't disinfect, I don't think. Since I had a fish with dropsy in that tank, I wanted to make sure I got out any harmful stuff.

 

[deli_conker]

Bleach is the way to go and in all honesty, it's a lot easier to rinse away then we all believe. It goes away quite quickly with dechlor as well.

Saying that, I would also like to add that I rinse several times more than I need to and do some overkill on the dechlor. Better safe than sorry. I would rather deal with bleach then with some unknown fungus or disease...

On a side note, I cleaned some of my filter stuff and a small tank in a very lazy way once and had no problems. I put it all in my dishwasher and poured some bleach in the bottom and let it run. Then I ran it again with water alone. Filled the tank up after everything dried, added the proper amount of dechlor and have had no problems with it.

Just make sure that use don't have the hot dry/plate warmer turned on and check to make sure that there is no food residue or other dirt in there when you start.

DISCLAIMER - I can't guarantee that anything put into a dishwasher is safe to put in a dishwasher, this is just my experience with the equipment I have.

 

[Aquafriend]

Yeah, oxyclean doesn't disinfect. I just disinfected a 10 g, plus all the gravel, ornaments, and plants. Same reason-infection I wanted to be sure was out before I re-used it. I used diluted bleach and rinsed well, de-chlorinated well. I'm also happy to say all my fabric plants stayed the same color, they didn't "bleach out". I'm not re-using the filter media, thought, I'm replacing it to be safe.