soap in tank, i know, i know!

[alonzogn2]

soap in my tank....ggrrrrrr

last year, my 4yr old grandson woke up one morning before i did.....yep , you guessed it.....when i walked into the livingroom i was greeted with a 8" wall of dish soap bubbles rising from my very expensive 55 gal salt water reef tank!!!!!!!!!!!

everything was discarded....except the 2 week old magnum canister filter i paid dearly for...couldnt bear to toss it in hopes of figuring out a way to remove soap residue.

any brilliant ideas would be great help.....i have a spare 10gal tank that i am going to use to run this canister for a week or so...doing complete water changes everyday...no carbon etc. at first....just gonna run it like crazy!!!
how about something in the water like vinegar or baking soda or any suggestions someone may have...........thanks ahead of time for any input!!! carla

 

[mr86mister]

Welcome to AA

maybe bleach would work...like a cup of it in the 10 gallon to get it cleaned up, chime on here people i'm not sure about this :?

 

[talloulou]

I would take the canister filter apart and thoroughly clean it.

 

[Jchillin]

Unless you had some very hard or strange soap, it should still be soluable in water. Take it apart and just continously rinse with water until no soap is present.

 

[alonzogn2]

thanks for the input! i have taken the canister apart and cleaned it and all the tubing with brushes....tossed the bio wheels .....and rinsed until there is no visible soap. and it was Dawn dish soap.... so i suppose i will run it a few days...then use 10 gal of water from an established tank and sacrifice some feeder fish to see if they survive.....

thanks again for the help.....

 

[Guest]

Ive never seen some one freak out over soap. you got rid of a 55 gallon aquarium because of soap!?!?! you could just keep rinsing until no more suds!!!

 

[talloulou]

No! Alonzogn2 didn't thow the actual tank away....Right?

 

[Guest]

everything was discarded....except the 2 week old magnum canister filter i paid dearly for...couldnt bear to toss it in hopes of figuring out a way to remove soap residue.

 

[alonzogn2]

oh good lord no.....kept tank....its freshwater now.....it wasnt a problem to clean...discarded all of the things that went INSIDE the tank....and the main concern with the canister filter is due to all of tubing they require....really hard to clean well. i would just like to be able to use it with the 55 gal again instead of the cheapy one there now....sorry for any confusion.....

 

[QTOFFER]

Very hot water and a dilute acid like vinegar will remove all traces of detergent from most surfaces.
If that doesn't work, try soaking the contaminated item in a slurry of activated charcoal - agitate often to keep the charcoal in suspension.

 

[Guest]

oh good lord no.....kept tank....its freshwater now.....it wasnt a problem to clean...discarded all of the things that went INSIDE the tank....and the main concern with the canister filter is due to all of tubing they require....really hard to clean well. i would just like to be able to use it with the 55 gal again instead of the cheapy one there now....sorry for any confusion.....

whew.. you scared me.. LMAO.. i can see how cleaning the tubing would be harder to clean.

 

[Toirtis]

.. i can see how cleaning the tubing would be harder to clean.

A bit more difficult, but everyone with tubing should have one of those flexible-shaft brushes made for cleaning tubes or you can make one out of some nylon string, a small weight and some nylon cloth.