[kazinator]

Dishwasher detergent is a different animal from the liquid detergent people use for washing dishes.

It's not the only "game in town".

I once washed a load of dishes in a laundry tub filled with a pretty strong concentration of Mr. Clean floor cleaner in hot water.

They came out squeaky, sparkling clean, like out of a dishwasher, without any scrubbing.

(Why I did that is that the dishes fell victim top a drain backup: vertical stack clogged somewhere below my floor, causing other people's black, stinking drain water to start coming up in the kitchen sink, and it soiled a bunch of dishes that were in the sink. I had to resort to something strong and anti-bacterial to feel good about those dishes. I still put them through the dishwasher, too.)