How To Clean An Old Tank?

[zukimoo]

Ok my fish have ich and I'm trying to get rid of it. I've done the put the temp up (80-82) , treat with ich meds, do some water changes, take out the filters and waited. It was just one and now both oscars have it. I've checked the water every day for the last week and everything seems to be good. The worst oscar was hidding until last night and they were both a little slow moving. Last night they seemed to come back alive but the ich is still there.


I've found a home for one of the oscars and they will take it when it's all better. I've found a used tank to get started as a hospital tank to see if trying to cure this would be better with a smaller amount of water to treat.

My home tank is a 55g (about 12"x12"x4' around this) mounted into the wall and I've got two oscars about 2.5" long a frog and a pleco. I'm going to move the oscars to a 10g and put the frog and the pleco in an other tank with my goldfish.

How do I clean the used tank because it's pretty dirty and what do I do with the 55G? Can I strip it down and clean everything?

What would you do?

 

[*Fishkies*]

Well for the new/old tank the one you've found used. I would clean it out real well with hot water. Then I would take the smallest amount of white vinegar and wash it out with that. Maybe like 1 teaspoon for the whole tank. Just take a paper towel then and some warm water and rub that all over the tank. This will kill anything that was previously in the tank. And then be sure to wash the entire tank out with fresh water until it does not smell like vinegar. Once it does not smell like vinegar then it is clean. However I would try to let the tank dry out for a day just to let all the vinegar evaporate. That is how I would clean the used tank that you found.

Are you no longer going to be using the 55gallon tank? Or is this the current tank that you have your oscars, frog and pleco in?

 

[zukimoo]

the 55 is the current tank that I have the oscars, frog and the pleco. I want one oscar in there and a pleco. The frog will move into it's own tank and the second oscar will go his new home.

I cleaned the tank tonight just using water and it came pretty clean. I will wipe it down with vinegar and let it sit for another day. I can't see that the ich is getting better but the oscars are deffinitly more like their old selves and moving around more.