A Fast and Effortless Way to Clean your Fish Tank

If all else fails, the Algae Eliminator Aquarium Treatment is available on Amazon UK.

For years I've been looking for a way to easily clean algae and slime from the items in my fish tank. Now I've finally cracked it.

No more endless scrubbing! Hello gleaming rocks and coral, wiped clean quickly without damaging the health of my goldfish.

I sound like some cheesy television commercial, but I don't care. I'm genuinely thrilled about this, and if King British want me to go on TV, I'll repeat it there too!

The wonder fish tank cleaning product in question is the Algae Eliminator by King British. I understand that it's called Algae Control (Aquarium Treatment) in the USA.

I acquired it for the simple reason that I was buying their Safe Water - which I've used for years - and the shop was running a two-for-one promotion.

I'd already grabbed the last Safe Water on the shelf, so I looked around for something else. My mother didn't raise me to pass up bargains and freebies in stores. I took the Algae Eliminator Aquarium Water Treatment - the best random free thing to ever fall into my clutches!

Once home, I calculated how much to pour into my goldfish tank. Dropped it in, then pretty much forgot I owned the bottle. Until now.

Obviously I had noticed that nothing in there was coated in its usual layer of grime. I'd vaguely explained that away as magic. Who in their right mind asks too many questions, if it appears that someone or something is doing their housework for them?

I picked out every stone, rock, coral arch and other pretty things to swim around. They all felt relatively slime free too. Strange, but see above.

In the past, I've experimented with finding a cleaning product which works in fish tanks. This is hard work because it can't contain chemicals to hurt your goldfish. Tipping bleach into the water is out then.

I'd been using bicarbonate of soda, which also works well enough. By mixing that into a paste and adding it to the bristles of an old toothbrush, you can scour those rocks quite thoroughly. But next to my pot of bicarb was that Algae Eliminator bottle. It was worth a try.

The bowl containing my fish tank decorations was filled with water. I poured a generous helping of King British Algae Eliminator over the top, then waggled my fingers in the water to mix it in. I walked away for about three hours.

When I returned, I was resigned to an hour or two of hard scrubbing. I reached into the bowl and took out the first large rock. It had no slime on it. I wiped it over once, because it felt weird not to.

I rinsed it thoroughly to remove all residual traces of the Algae Eliminator. I didn't want to introduce too much of that into my tank, as that would affect the health of my goldfish.

Then the second stone came out of the bowl clean too, and the third.  Even the coral required only the most cursory once over with my toothbrush. By now I was happy dancing, finally clued into the fact that my slime scrubbing days were over.

The penny dropped. I'd located the origin of the 'magic', which had been keeping my tank clean all along! And being a writer, I immediately knew that I'd be gushing about this on Wizzley, so I paused to take a picture.

I truly dread to think how many hours of my life have been spent scrubbing slime.

As the years brought bigger aquariums with each up-date, there was more stuff to get covered in goldfish crap. The time spent at the sink, vigorously scouring, stretched into sessions of ever greater duration.

'Slime' is such a soft sounding word to describe what often seemed welded on. So many old toothbrushes have been worn down to the nub, their bristles eroded in endless sweeps of coral crevices. It takes stamina to stay, when your fingers are throbbing, your back is aching and still that last bit of slime won't shift.

I've banished objects from the goldfish tank before now. My will to keep them on pretty display became out-stripped by my desire to stop scrubbing at stubborn slime. I've berated myself too. Pushed on, quite literally, until my red, raw fingers have grown too tired to direct the brush. It slips, hard pressed on the coral, and takes the skin off my knuckles with it.

It's not even like I'm a particularly slovenly goldfish owner. I do frequent partial water changes. I try not to over-feed them (number one cause of algae and slime in cold water aquariums).

I undertake proper tank cleaning reasonably regularly too. Just as often as that mental ratio, recoiling in horror at the state those fish are expected to live in, edges over the part whining that cleaning the tank is such a big job.

The bar is very low. It possibly says something dire about my psyche, but I feel more sorry for the fish than I do for myself. There's nothing they can do about the grime inside their tank. Until someone invents a miniature, waterproof, gill-operated vacuum cleaner, it's all down to me.

It's worth remembering that grave responsibility, when my fingers ache. When it feels like you may have done permanent damage, after applying the pressure needed for intense precision scouring for so long.

The goldfish never quite seem very grateful. But then, they're goldfish.