What is best to use to keep live wells fresh and clean?

I use baking soda once per year. Making sure the live well is flusher several times before putting fish back into the live well. Flush with lake water only.

During the spring when fishing many tournaments in a row you may feel the need to clean the live well with Peroxide. Any small amount of this that does not get flushed out with lake water will not hurt the fish. Still I flush the wells several times with lake water before putting any bass in the well.

Thanks a bunch, I have a tourney tomorrow so I will do the Peroxide treatment and keep high hopes that I can put some big ones in the clean well.

Be sure to fill and dump a couple of times in the yard. Then do it again pumping lake water through all the system, then run and dump on the lake. This should flush any excess that may be setting in the lines from CITY Water.

Hydrogen Peroxide is actually good for the fish. Look at the bottle. Its chemical makeup is H3O. That means it has 1 excess oxygen molecule. When added to water, it will release that extra oxygen molecule into the water and become water H2O itself creating a oxygen rich water. But just like us, too much oxygen is not a good thing. Most cases you can pour in as much as a 1/4 cup into a livewell and the fish will love it.

Google Doug Hannon the bass professor, he encourages the use of Hyrdogen Peroxide. It's 1 ounce per 5-8 gallons of water or something.

Not trying to bash you here. Actually hydrogen peroxide is H2O2, and yes it does have an extra oxygen molecule. However, that structure is very unstable and one of the oxygen molecules will release to a gas, which is the bubbles you see when you pour the hydrogen peroxide out of the bottle. Also, the household hydrogen peroxide is very weak in strength, typically 3-6% by volume. So not much "extra" oxygen in there.

I keep it simple

-scrub pad
-simple green(no harsh chemicals)

Flush it out a couple time and your good to go.

What is the world are you guys doing to have a need to clean the livewells? Ive never had a dirty livewll besides a perch or shad that gets left over. Even then just toss it out and viola! its clean.

Oh my goodness

I just scrub brush it clean with lake water. I don't see anyone cleaning the bottom of the lake!

Roger That , cleaning livewell ?

Hahaha, this reminds me of the first time I put catfish in my livewell. Took 3 days and I don't know how much bleach to get that [censored] out!

No offense taken, you are absolutely correct, I did put the extra molecule on the wrong element. It being diluted is what makes it ok to add to the livewell. And being unstable is what makes it release the extra oxygen molecule. And yes you are correct, it is not a tremendous amt of oxygen but making the water have more oxygen at all is very helpful when the water is warmer. Not a big thing but one of those every little bit helps thing.

I always leave my lids open after each day on the water so it can at least air dry. Not saying this is all you need to do but it helps especially when it starts getting warmer out