I do 2 sorts of cleaning for both the atties and the tanks: quick, and deep-clean.
On the quick-clean:
For the tanks, I take a q-tip and swab out the mouth-piece-chamber-place, and take a napkin to the mouthpiece-thingie. If I decide to change flavors in the tank, then I'll take napkin to the juice reservoir (Usually I just top off; if you diy, these bottles fit right in the wick-hole, so you don't have to remove the cap at all:
4 Dram Amber Glass Vial w/ Dropper) + 1 on the silcone caps suggestion; you can get both the type a's and b's from MVS:
Soft Cap for Ego-Tank Cartridge - 10/Pack.
For the atty, I'll remove the wick-plate, do a dry-burn, take a lighter to the wick to burn off the excess juice, prime the atty and the wick, and that's that. Also, as part of changing tanks, I'll put a napkin to the outside of the tank and inside of the cone from time to time, and also the connection from the atty to the batt. Sometimes, I use alcohol on the connection to clean it.
On the deep-clean:
I dry-burn the atty, and then run it in an ultrasonic jewelry cleaner for 9 minutes:
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...rasonic-cleaning-atomizers-very-best-way.html I'll re-fabricate the wick:
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/ego-type-models/169520-simplecjs-ego-t-wick-mod.html (on the wick mod, you want to use way less silica than pictured, and I've had success with minimizing the PTB, as well-- or rather, lots of failure by using too much ptb
; it takes a bit to get the hang of it, but then it's good). I'll then throw the tanks in for a round at the ultrasonic, disassembling them entirely; I just use cheapo vodka for the cleaning agent, changing it every now and again. I let the atty sit to dry for some 48 hours before priming and reassembly.
On dry-burning: Never with the wick in, because the juice build-up can fuse the wick to the coil, creating an adventure with tweezers! (though I've found this to also happen with the stock wick on the genuine atties, 3 out of 4 of 'em, just with regular use...) Also, I find it good to take a napkin and blot up the juice around the coil, by rolling it up long-wise, and stuffing it down the cone, to the coil. That silver stuff down there seems to hold juice, which makes it take much longer to get to a good dry-burn at the coil. I have a teenie-tiny screwdriver that I use to scrape off some of the build-up from the coil if it's real bad-- you want to be careful, though: I had a piece of debris fall into the air-hole once, and it clogged that atty real good
That was with a non-genuine atty though, which had bigger air-holes; the genuine products are clearly designed differently, and seem superior. For my part, I don't intend on buying a knock-off atty ever again (but I've found that even the genuine product benefits from making fresh wicks; but if you're not into tinkering and fiddling, I wouldn't recommend messing with that, because there's definitely a tedious learning-curve involved with that one-- but once you've solved it, it's solved).
As with any maintenance routine, YMMV
Hope this helps!
p.s.: I use distilled water for everything vaping, to avoid calcification and whatnot of the equipment.