^Yeah water actually is good. What I did when my dumbass friend spilled mountain dew on my NEW dualshock 3 was take a toothpick, a tissue, and a little bit of water and wadded the tissue a bit, got water on it, and then used the tooth pick to clean it. It worked and then got sticky again so I did it again and now its perfect.
(if you could understand my jumbled description)