how to sterilize a tank when you break it down

LMOUTHBASS said:

my 10g QT tank got hit hard with some type of disease - when everything dies off i want to sterilize the tank - how do i do this? i'm actually kinda nervous about ever using it again after i clean it - should i just dump it and buy a new one - thank goodness for qt tanks though - this could of ravaged my 55g if i didnt qt first!

Click to expand...

Bleach. It sterilizes just about anything and lucky for us, it's active component is chlorine! Since we as fishkeepers usually have some dechlorinator on hand, it works out really well, don'tcha think?

Hot water and oxyclean. Works are well as bleach, but rinses out much easier and doesn't stink up the place.

If you used Bleach, I would do several rinses, and at least one rinse that had used water with too much dechlor in it. Dunno on Oxy-clean, never used it.

Oxyclean requires just one rinse, no dechlorinating needed.

What is Oxy-Clean's active ingredient? Does it actually sterilize? If so, in what concentrations? just curious, I knew it was one of those miracle cleaners that was safe for colors and removed stains and was mildly abrasive, but I had no idea it actually sterilized. Since they use Oxy, peroxide comes to mind, but that's not color safe either. Although, it would make sense, since you said it takes one rinse, and peroxide is basically harmless once that extra oxygen molecule bubbles off...

Oxiclean is a peroxide generator when it goes into solution - which is of course why it is safe. The rinses are basically to get rid of all the oxidized organics after treatment.

Oxygen/peroxide is not as hard on most colored fabrics as is chlorine bleaching. Nor on plastics, but it is very hard on metals.

I bought a couple used 20g setups from a LFS that was going out of business. $20 a piece for tank hood filter and gravel was too good to pass up. All the times I had been in there though, the tanks looked unhealthy and cloudy...perhaps a reason for his business demise.
Anyway, I wanted to make darn sure I didn't 'catch anything' so i sprayed all parts of the filter with bleach and then set both tanks up just as i would with fish in them. i set them on the counter in the kitchen and poured a gallon of bleach in each one. I then ran them for 24 hours, stirring the gravel every couple hours until bed time...maybe 6 times. Then I drained all the water out and rinsed well. I dumped the gravel in 2 5 gallon buckets and sat them under the faucet in the bath tub and just let it run. I stirred the gravel ocasionally until I could no longer feel the ''slimy'' feeling indicating bleach was still present.
Then I rinsed the tanks and fliters out in the tub and then sat everything back up in the kitchen. I filled them with new water and added dechlor...like twice normal amount. I let that run for a few hours and stirred the gravel up again a few times.....one more total rinse and I was satisfied everything was killed.

To make a long story short, just bleach the heck out of everything and rinse well. Since you have a known disease or fungus problem I would go over everything with a fine-toothed bleach happy comb just to make sure everything was gone.
Bleach water and time is so cheap, why not make sure you've done everything you can?