Using an Old Aquarium?

High all,

We have a 7 mos old Sunglow. At this time he is in a 10-gallon tank. We have a 30-gallon aquarium that has not been utilized for over 6 years (Just laying in the garage).

The aquarium was used for salt-water fish. Now it's just grimy with cobwebs.

We are new to snake-keeping and are not yet in tune to the sensitivity and tolerance ranges of these beautiful animals.

Does anyone have any ideas about how best to clean the tank in order to house our snake? I have been told that we should wash the tank with vinegar.

Should we abandon our idea of using this old tank?

Any feedback is much appreciated.

-Sunglow

If you'd like to use it...
It may be more of a hassle than buying a new one...
Wash it with water/ 1/10th bleach mixture...
Make sure it is rinsed very, very well.
Then, make sure you have a TIGHT fitting lid.

I'd go with Cornkeeper's idea of using bleach. I would think that it's more effective than using vinegar even though that works too.

But just to remember that you have to rinse the tank throughly and make sure that there is no bleach left behind as this would cause a lot of trouble.

Good luck and Happy Herping!

tank cleaning...

i use bleach to clean all of my tanks every 2-3 weeks and have noticed no ill effects... just make sure you rinse it very well and dry it out. i just bought 4 used tanks about a month ago and cleaned them this way and everyone seems healthy and ?happy? ...shouldn't be any problem... have fun!!! jim

I'd say go with the bleach thing.

Then after you've bought a new big tank for your sunglow (instead of using the old one because that's too much of a hassle at this point) you'll already have room in the 10 gallon for the new hatchling you're going to get, and you'll also have a tank (the old 30, which is no longer "too much of a hassle") to put the second one in when he reaches adulthood. ;-)

(I'd probably also buy a few more 10's too, for all the other hatchlings you'll want to get when you realize you're addicted to corns, hehehe.)

I've had no problems using bleach on an old saltwater aquarium, it should be fine. Of course you could just build/buy a rack system, so that you have plenty of space for all the new corns you'll eventually get. Hehehe. It's impossible to keep just one.

I aquired a 10 gallon for my baby milk snake, and it was filthy.. vinegar worked great.. I just filled it with some water and some vinegar, not sure what the mixture was, and let it sit for 15 minutes and everything fell off the side of the tank