cloudy water

[phin]

I only use white vinegar to clean my tanks. Such as wiping down the hood, or hob lids, or cleaning a new (read: used) tank that I've aquired. When I clean a tank I will take it outside, rinse it off with a garden hose, empty the water and pour a cup or two of vinegar into the tank, then with a rag scrub the whole tank. Rinse a few times with the garden hose an good to go. I have never had a problem.

Vinegar works well, and I use a lot of it.

 

[achase]

I use vinegar as well but I was curious if a certain amount of vinegar should be used.

 

[bassbonediva]

The reason I say "not too much" is for a couple of reasons.

#1-Not much is needed to do the job.
#2-Using too much vinegar makes the vinegar harder to get out of the tank. If the solution is more mild, yeah it'll take a little more elbow grease to clean the tank, but you won't have to rinse the tank multiple times to get the vinegar out (I usually rinse my tanks until they don't smell of vinegar anymore).

 

[aakaakaak]

I tried using that API aquarium cleaner stuff on the used 29 gal that used to house a turtle. That crap would literally not come off after multiple hard scrubs. I eventually switched to Soft Scrub and just washed the tank out really good. Even then it still took me a few hours to get out "most" of the hard water/lime/calcium stains.

 

[bassbonediva]

I've never had to hard-scrub any of my tanks when I've used vinegar and I've only ever bought two of my tanks new. In fact, my 29gal used to be a saltwater tank and had all sorts of build-up, but the vinegar and hot water just took it right off. The 55gal had been sitting with decaying plants and about 4" of water in it for six months, plus it had been colored with a crayon and a permenant marker and vinegar took off everything but the permenant marker (I think I used rubbing alcohol to get that off, but it was on the outside of the tank, so it didn't matter).