Comments on: Is it bad to wash your fish tank with dish soap?

By: Luckylefty

Luckylefty — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:45:25 +0000

are you nuts?you need to get a new sponge, get it wet with warm water and scrub it down.

p.s. how would you like to swim in soapy water?

By: vort3xyz

vort3xyz — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:37:35 +0000

Very bad. If any of the chemicals, surficants, phosphates, etc remain on the tank surface, it can poison the fish or mess up the tank water. All it takes is not rinsing perfectly once and you can harm your fish.

Use a scrubber pad & some elbow grease.

By: Venice Girl

Venice Girl — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:28:21 +0000

You have just been plain lucky. I accidentally used the wrong sponge to clean my tank once, and my fish died within 30 minutes after putting them back in. Another time, I replaced water in my pond with water from the hose. The laundry waste water was backing up into the hose pipe and soap, unbeknownst to me, got into the pond. The fish were dead within 24 hours. Don’t use soap. Besides, aquariums don’t need to be, and should not be, squeeky clean. It may look “ugly” to us to not have a perfectly clean tank, but the tank is a lot healthier if you allow a little bacteria to grow. There is a beneficial bacteria that grows in the gravel and that collects in the filter and you are destroying the natural balance of the water quality if you kill all of this bacteria. You should only scrape the algae off the glass with a scraper, rinse the filter in the old water you remove and only suction out the excess poop and old food from the gravel. You should disturb the gravel as little as possible and you should only remove about 20% – 30% of the water for a water change. There should always be more than half of the “old” water left in the tank. Trust me, this is a much healthier environment for the fish that way. No more heavy-duty cleaning and no more soap at all.

By: crystal m

crystal m — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:02:55 +0000

dont do it it will kill them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! just boil everything

By: G

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:02:21 +0000

i think people get too weird about soap. don’t pour any soap on your fish. if you use bleach or ammonia in a tank let it sit a day until it oxygenates out. common sense is usually the best sense.

By: bzzflygirl

bzzflygirl — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:47:12 +0000

You have been lucky so far. You must rinse well. If I were you though I’d let the tank cycle, it will keep itself clean and the fish will be much healthier. By doing a constant cycle of letting the water get dirty and starting over, the fish go from crystal clear water, to ammonia water burning their gills, and back to clear water again. Over time they will suffer from this.

By: powneverforgotten

powneverforgotten — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:23:10 +0000

this is horrible for them. though there may be no visible bubbles the biotics in the soap can harm the fish. ive never heard of anyone doing this and their fish living. please get a gravel vacuum and use that from now on please.

By: magicman116

magicman116 — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:59:48 +0000

Dish soap is certainly toxic to fish and should be avoided completely in cleaning anything that goes in your tank. So far you have been lucky that you have been able to remove enough residue so that it didn’t kill the fish. It’s like playing russian roulette with your fish … sooner or later it will get them.

I have to agree with an earlier post. Please take the time to read up on a better way to keep your tank clean. Don’t tear down the tank when it gets really dirty, instead clean the glass and filter and do a partial water change every week and it will never get so dirty that you need to tear it down. Much healthier for the fish and really easier on you too.

Best of luck with the fish!

By: ann m

ann m — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:42:03 +0000

We’ve always use salt to clean the tanks then rinse well

By: rhino_man420

rhino_man420 — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 13:50:53 +0000

THESE PEOPLE ARE CRAZY go to a few fish forums and read, you are lucky so far, soap kills fish, besides the bacteria in the tank needs to be there, you are only supposed to do “PARTIAL”water changes!, you need to do some research