Livewell Cleaning

10% Bleach to 90% water works great, IF you want to try just Baking Soda/water that is another choice.

Here is another thread about cleaning your livewell.

Ron

I use simple green with water and a sponge its biodegradeable and it rinses away well
I also use it to clean the other parts of the boat too
It dose not stain even if you miss some on the rinse

Here is my reply from the other post…..

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Once you get it clean the best way to keep it clean is after a day on the water when you get home rinse out the livewell with your garden hose even if you have not put fish in the well that day. Then when you put the boat away in the garage leave the livewell door open. I do this every time after a day on the water and never have a problem with a smelly livewell.

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Dish soap. Dawn works good.

Well I started “stage one” with white vinegar, left the pump on and the livewell on recirc, I’ll let that go for a day or two. Normally I rinse it out after I’ve kept any fish, but I don’t keep fish all that often, which is a big reason the minnows got forgotten in there in the first place.

I’m sure bleach is fish safe, I’ll just have to be extra careful with it (carpet) maybe I’ll toss to Baking soda in there too, that is if the vinegar doesn’t take care of it. It’s not all that bad, I just didn’t really expect it to get much better just sitting there.

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Well I started “stage one” with white vinegar,

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I’d say thats a good choice. The only thing that bothers me about bleach is its hard on plastic stuff, unless you do what Sliderfishn said and use only 10% bleach. I’m in the HVAC business, had some condensate pumps go bad and some cracked because a technician was using bleach instead of vinegar.

Interesting point, I didn’t consider thateither, I really prefer not to change the pump either, it’s way down there doesn’t look like a whole lot of fun.

I use bleach all the time in my livewell, baitwell and bilge area. It’s the responsible thing to do when you are fishing on different lakes/water systems all the time. Put some water in your livewell (an inch or so) dump in some bleach and scrub it out. Rum your pumps on recirculate (also pump-out if you have this system on your ranger) and drain. I leave the bleach in the bilge and run water down there to wash around and then fill enough water so the auto bilge will pump it out.

This has worked for me for the last 8+ years.

ted

I use OdoBan works good for me for cleaning and it gets rid of the bad odors.

I would stick with a 3 part cleaning procedure. Use whatever detergent/soap you prefer. I usually use Simple green, but any good soap(dish soap or otherwise) works fine. Start by using that to remove all the “grime” and soils from the livewell/lines. This should be followed by a thorough rinse with just freshwater. And finally, if desired, use a no-rinse sanitizer/disinfectant to reduce any micro organisms that may stick around. The thing with just a simple bleach solution is that it is really actually a terrible cleaner, it contains little, if any, surfactants and water conditioners. What may be seen as “cleaning” is really just a bleaching of the surface. It is a good disinfectant/sanitizer, but that’s about it. It is also hard on plastics and will cause them to turn brittle. I would look for a quaternary ammonium based disinfectant/sanitizer for the final step. These are much easier on metal and plastic surfaces, and if used at a sanitizing level can actually be drank which means no rinse necessary to keep the fish alive. My $.02

Thanks for the info, the vinegar seemed to work pretty good so far, it’s been raining a aweful lot so It’s stuck in the garage, I’m currently in a fresh water rinse phase, I did scrub it out pretty good before hand, it doesn’t appear to have any stains, overall it wasn’t like you’d open it and get sick, just a little unpleasant.