Cleaning a Tank to Sell

[JLynn]

Basically, I've got this IM Lagoon 25 that I am shutting down and would like to sell. But it is absolutely plagued with algae (worse than anything you've probably ever seen) and I was hoping someone could advise me on the best way to clean that all off before I try to sell it. Do I have to go in with a scraper or could I maybe dissolve it or make it detach from the tank walls with some kind of chemical, like bleach or something? Would love to avoid having to manually remove everything, especially the accumulated gunk in the filtration chambers.

 

[Silent]

Vinegar is good at dissolving it.

 

[Sidvicious]

Let the tank soak in a vinegar/water bath for 3 days and then get yourself a scraper and have at it scraping the algae off.

 

[BeejReef]

Agree w Silent.

You can run it with vinegar for a few days, like 1-10 vinegar to tap water... higher concentration = faster clean. If you like, you can follow that up with distilled bleach. BRS also now sells a citric acid that's supposed to be faster acting. The trick, IMHO, is to take pictures of it full of water after you've cleaned it. Just impossible to make a used, empty salt tank look decent no matter how clean.. lol.

 

[Scurvy]

I usually go strait to bleach when doing a hard core cleaning like that. A half gallon or gallon in a 25 tank will be much more effective than vinegar. Id just run the return pump for flow like it was still setup and clean that too if it were me.

 

[JLynn]

Great. Thanks for the advice, guys!

 

[dadnjesse]

You could probably use Citric acid too, I think it works better than Vinegar to remove Coraline Algae from my power heads