Drainage system algae cleaning?

[APailthorp]

My drainage system for three trays to a two gallon bucket is gross. It is less than a year old and it smells like the worst aquarium you've ever seen.

Other than physically wiping algae out of the bucket and from the outside of the hoses where they get wet from being in the bucket, any recommendations?

Can I flush the lines with a bleach solution or something that will be effective and not cause undue risks to my chameleons?

TIA,
-->Aaron

 

[pgr7]

Vinegar works well with removing crud from my reef tanks equipment including hard coraline algae.

 

[Carlton]

To keep my misting systems clean periodically I use the system's pump to cycle vinegar through all the tubing, then more water rinsing, then a rinse with diluted bleach followed by more rinsing. Something like that could also help here.

 

[MSMorgan]

Vinegar. I'm curious as to the ratio of bleach to water. 1 to 10, or ?

 

[APailthorp]

I haven't tried anything yet, and vinegar seems like it should be safe, but bleach has fumes... Lizards (like birds) are pretty sensitive to fumes so I won't be trying bleach, just vinegar.

Thanks!
-->Aaron

 

[jajeanpierre]

I haven't tried anything yet, and vinegar seems like it should be safe, but bleach has fumes... Lizards (like birds) are pretty sensitive to fumes so I won't be trying bleach, just vinegar.

Thanks!
-->Aaron

Aaron, why do you say that lizards are sensitive to fumes the way birds are?

Birds have a very unique respiratory systems--air flows only one way across the lungs so a lot more air actually passes across the capillaries in the lungs facilitating a more efficient gas exchange. Although some reptiles do have a unidirectional lung, they don't have the same oxygen demands that birds have (for flight) so shouldn't have the same problems birds have. Chameleons have not been shown to have a unidirectional lung but that might be because no one has looked. Chameleons actually have a very low demand for oxygen as they don't move around very much and when they do move, it isn't usually very fast. While birds have many things in common with reptiles--after all, birds are modern day dinosaurs--I don't think their rate of gas transfer is one of them. Just to be clear, I'm not arguing with your assumption that they need to be protected from toxic fumes, just questioning where you got the science to claim they were sensitive to inhaled toxins the way birds are.