Sanitizing Tanks Options

[Texasrvers]

Recently I was at a Walmart (and no, this is not a post about parking there) and was buying chemicals for the black water tank when another customer (an RVer also, I assume) asked me what I used to sanitizes my tanks. At first I thought he meant the fresh water tank, but soon discovered he was talking about the gray and black water tanks. He told me that about once a month (and more often in hot weather) he fills both tanks to capacity with water (after dumping them) and then adds bleach. He lets that stand for a day or so and then dumps and rinses the tanks.

All we have ever done is run water through the gray water tank and back wash the black water tank. We do keep the drop in chemical packets in the black water tank when in use, but we have never done the bleach treatment.

Is this something we should be doing? Does anyone else "sanitize" their gray and black water tanks?

[dalsgal]

Adding bleach actually kills the "good" bacteria that helps prevent odors. We travel in our bus and have never added anything to our tanks and have never had any odor problem at all. We let our tank get nearly full and then dump. If you dump too often you end up with lots of sludge in the bottom of your tank. We run a couple of gallons of fresh water into the tank, flush that and close the tank.

We just recently had a camper here that developed an odor problem and we found he was adding bleach any time he smelled anything. We had him keep his tank closed, add a couple of spoonfuls of Rid-ex and when the tank was full to dump again. Then he added a bit more of the Rid-ex and, again, let the tank fill before dumping. He has not had any odor problem since then.