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RV black tank treatments make plenty of promises, but seeing what they actually do inside a tank is another story.
I found three separate video tests involving Liquified, Unique RV Digest-It, the popular Kleen Tank treatment method, and several other popular black tank treatments.
Each test was set up differently. Still, one name kept showing up near the top.
So, what exactly did these tests show?
Test #1: Liquified vs. Unique RV Digest-It
The first comparison came from the National RV Training Academy’s Todd’s Tip Tuesday.
The test was fairly simple. Both treatments were mixed with two cups of water using amounts scaled from their respective label directions. Each container then received the same amount of dog food to represent waste, along with toilet paper.
The containers sat overnight before their contents were poured through strainers.
Both treatments worked.
Unique RV Digest-It broke down much of the dog food, but more recognizable pieces remained in its strainer. Liquified produced a thinner mixture with less material left behind.
The tester summed it up pretty plainly: both products broke down the simulated waste, but Liquified appeared to work faster. He ultimately named Liquified the winner of the comparison.
There is an obvious limitation here. Two cups of water and some dog food in a container are a long way from an RV black tank carrying several days of waste.
The test tells us something about breakdown speed. It tells us much less about how either product performs during an actual dump.
The next video tried to answer that question.
Test #2: Liquified vs. the Kleen Tank Method
RV Tips & Travels went much further with its test.
Instead of small containers, the channel built two simulated 32-gallon black tanks from polyethylene storage bins. The tanks were vented, tilted toward their drains, and fitted with RV-style dump valves.
One received Liquified. The other used the treatment recipe promoted by Kleen Tank.
Kleen Tank takes a very different approach to black tank care. Its current recipe calls for Calgon Bath Pearls, Pine-Sol, and water. Rather than trying to digest waste, the company says its mixture helps keep material from sticking to tank surfaces.
The tester added equal amounts of water, dog food, peeled bananas, and septic-safe toilet paper to the two tanks over several days.
Before dumping, the difference was clear.
Liquified had broken down most of the test material. The Kleen Tank side still contained recognizable pieces, which was expected since breaking down waste isn’t the goal of that method.
Then came the part that interested me more: the dump.
As the tanks emptied, material eventually stopped moving toward the drains as the water level and pressure dropped. Both tanks retained some material, but considerably more recognizable waste remained on the Kleen Tank side.
Liquified got more out during the initial dump.
Then the tester partially backfilled each tank with clean water and dumped them again.
After that single rinse, some recognizable material remained in the Kleen Tank tank. The Liquified tank had no visible waste or paste remaining.
That gave Liquified its second win.
There were limitations here, too. Dog food and bananas were standing in for human waste, and the drain openings sat about six inches above the bottoms of the test tanks because of the bins’ shape. The tanks also remained stationary instead of being bounced around in an RV traveling down the road.
We’ve covered this particular experiment in more detail in our article on whether RV black tank treatments actually work.
But there was still another test, and this one brought a lot more products into the mix.
Test #3: Eight Treatments Go Head-to-Head
RV Gear and Far tested eight different black tank treatments plus a water-only control for six days.
Each container started with two gallons of water and enough treatment for a 40-gallon tank. Twice a day, the tester added dog food, toilet paper, and more water.
The results started separating surprisingly fast.
By the second day, two treatments were way ahead of the others: Liquified and Unique RV Digest-It Plus.
At one point, the tester counted about 13 recognizable dog-food pieces in the Liquified container and roughly 20 in Unique. He described Liquified as having a slight advantage at that stage, although both were far ahead of the remaining treatments.
After six days, the gap between those two had mostly disappeared.
Unique had reduced its contents to mostly fine particles with no large pieces remaining. Liquified looked similar, with no large pieces and mostly broken-down dog food and toilet paper.
AquaMAX and Eco Strong also caught up considerably by day six, but Liquified and Unique had a clear speed advantage early in the experiment.
The tester did not name Liquified the sole overall winner. His final choices depended partly on how someone wanted their tank contents handled and how easy the products were to measure and carry.
For fast waste breakdown, though, Liquified and Unique were his two standouts.
He later told StressLess Camping that he had previously used Happy Camper but switched to using Liquified and Unique after conducting the experiment.
So, Who Was the Winner?
Across these three video tests, Liquified performed the most consistently.
In the first test, it broke down the simulated waste faster than Unique RV Digest-It and was named the winner.
In the second, it broke down more material and helped more of it leave the simulated tank than the Kleen Tank method. After one rinse, no visible waste or paste remained in the Liquified tank.
During the much larger third experiment, Liquified and Unique Digest-It Plus separated themselves from the pack very early. Liquified held a small early advantage, although Unique had largely caught up by the end of the six-day test.
That is about as far as I would take the result.
These were informal tests, not controlled lab experiments, and each used a different setup, amount of water, test period, and type of simulated waste. So the results show how Liquified performed in these specific tests, not how it would perform in every RV black tank.
The third experiment also used enough treatment for a 40-gallon tank even though each test container ended with only about eight gallons of contents. The tester acknowledged this when discussing his results.
Odor control wasn’t consistently measured either, and that is another reason many RV owners use tank treatments.
But if we’re simply asking which treatment produced the most consistently strong results across these particular tests, Liquified kept showing up at or near the top.
There Was Another Winner in These Tests: Water
Something else kept appearing throughout these experiments.
Water.
And we bring this up continually.
In the eight-treatment comparison, even the plain-water control broke down a surprising amount of dog food over six days. It didn’t perform as quickly as Liquified or Unique, but water alone did more than the tester expected.
The RV Tips & Travels test showed another benefit. Adding fresh water and performing just one additional dump removed a large amount of the material left after the initial dump.
So even if you use a treatment, giving the tank enough water and rinsing it after dumping can make a big difference.
How you add that rinse water may play a role, too.
We recently looked at another RVer who put two popular black tank cleaning methods to the test. Two full backfills struggled to move some heavier material, while quickly pouring a 5-gallon bucket through the toilet created much more movement inside the tank and visibly removed more debris.
Tank treatment can help break things down. Water still has to carry it all out.
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