Resurrecting a fish tank, part 1

My 29-gallon fish tank has been dormant for four months. It went uncleaned for a couple months before that. My lack of aquatic attention can be blamed on the amount of time needed to search for and move to a new place.

I'm not proud of it, but the caked-on scum in my fish tank developed into a rainbow of colors. There was green scum. There was purple scum. There was black scum. And I kid you not, there was scum that changed colors like the corner of a $20-dollar bill.

Clearly, there are only a few industrial products I could use to remove that scum, none of which would be safe for any future fish residents, which require a narrow range of pH levels and water chemicals to survive.

Or I could take the fish tank to a (manual) car wash and blast it with the high-pressure rinse cycle. Guess which option I chose?

It actually was fun to clean the fish tank at the car wash (obvious note: remove any live fish from the the tank before attempting this), though I got many strange looks from other car wash patrons.

Using the soap setting on the water gun (not the separate soap wand) helped loosen the entrenched scum. And the high-pressure rinse cycle did, in fact, clean everything out, though it sprayed soap bubbles everywhere.

After drying the fish tank off. I brought it home and filled it with some new gravel and decorations. Now I just need fish.

[freshly cleaned tank, with its light off and its light on]