What Is A High Quality Holding Tank Treatment?

In many of the articles listed here on The Line Of Doody, we refer to using a “high-quality holding tank treatment”. What exactly does that mean? In this article we will answer that very question.

A high-quality holding tank treatment should do the following things:

• Break down waste and toilet paper
• Eliminate odors 
• Maintain working sensors

While this is a reasonably short list of requirements, many holding tank treatments on the market are not able to perform all (sometimes, any!) of these functions. We will go into depth on each of the three things that a holding tank treatment should do to define why each is necessary.

Breaking Down Waste

This is an essential requirement for a high-quality holding tank treatment for several reasons. To begin with, if waste and toilet paper is not being broken down in a black water holding tank, it will begin to accumulate over time.

As this happens, it can begin to stack on top of itself and this can lead to the dreaded poop pyramid (especially if you don’t keep your black tank valve closed at all times except for dumping the black tank). If given enough time to build up it can lead to a complete blockage of the pipe that connects the RV toilet to the black water holding tank. 

Another common occurrence of waste and toilet paper not being actively broken down is clogs accumulating inside the base of the tank, or inside the holding tank waste discharge pipe and valve assembly. This can lead to little or no flow out of the black water holding tank when it is time to dump the tank.

Finally, if the waste and paper have not broken down in the holding tank, these can begin to cling to sensors in the tank. When this happens, the sensors can begin to misread. This will leave you blind to the level of liquid and waste inside the holding tank, which will make it difficult to know when to dump the tank. 

So you can see why a high-quality holding tank treatment should have the ability to actively break down waste and toilet paper. Once broken down, the waste and toilet paper will be able to flow freely out of the tank and into a sewer port, with no accumulation and therefore no clogs or plugs.

Eliminating Odors

No one wants to stay in a stinky RV. Odors coming from black water holding tanks are caused by many different airborne molecules, but the worst and most noticeable is hydrogen sulfide, which smells similar to methane gas.What causes the hydrogen sulfide gas to occur? Anaerobic bacteria decompose human waste starting inside your gut and continuing in the holding tank. As the bacteria break down the waste, hydrogen sulfide gas is formed.

High-quality holding tank treatments have the ability to do one of two things: replace the stinky anaerobic bacteria (the hydrogen sulfide producers) with aerobic or facultative bacteria (the non-stinky producers), or completely wipe out the anaerobic bacteria.

Tank treatments that are powered by aerobic bacteria, (the gold standard of holding tank treatments) will break down solid waste just like those problematic anaerobic bacteria do, but in doing so, they will emit carbon dioxide and water instead of hydrogen sulfide. This allows you to get fully digested waste without any of the smells. If you would like to read more about how bacteria can break down waste and paper, dive into this article.

If the high-quality holding tank treatment you have decided to go with is one which completely destroys the anaerobic bacteria in an effort to reduce toilet odors, it is important to know that your treatment is also capable of breaking down the waste and paper in the tank. Remember, a high-quality holding tank treatment must do all three from the list above. As of writing this, we do now know of any tank treatments that can neutralize the bacteria inside the tank AND sufficiently break down waste. So, if you have a tank treatment that is designed to kill bacteria, please be wary of any marketing claims that they are able to break down paper or poop – they can’t. And, remember, essentially all brands of tank treatments make this claim, so buyer beware!

Maintain working sensors

Working sensors are sometimes thought of as a bit of a myth in the RV world. They do not need to be, though. A high-quality holding tank treatment – along with adherence to the proper treatment schedule – should have the ability to break down waste and paper sufficiently enough to prevent waste from accumulating on the sensor probes, causing the tank sensors to misread.

 Tank sensors begin to misread when undigested waste or toilet paper attaches to the sensor heads, if the waste or paper is also touching liquid in the black tank it may close the circuit, and thereby causing erroneous readings at the control panel inside the RV. If you would like to read more about RV sensors and how they work, check out this article.

The Takeaway

Although many RV holding tank treatments on the market today make claims that they can accomplish one or two (or all!) of the prerequisites listed at the top of this article, a high-quality holding tank treatment should be able to accomplish all three. We certainly recommend doing plenty of research when considering a high-quality holding tank treatment – and if you believe that the treatment you are currently using doesn’t provide enough information on its label, SDS sheet, or website, we encourage you to contact the manufacturer to ask for evidence that their products can achieve their purported claims. If they dodge your questions, that should be a sign that there is some “creative liberties” being taken by their marketing departments.

It is also important to mention that many RVers use non-traditional tank treatments per the recommendation of fellow RVers or “experts”, like bleach, Pine-Sol, Calgon, etc. These products run into

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