Best way to disinfect cages?

[RideLowInAGTO]

What's the best way to heavily disinfect an aquarium? Is there a good solution that will get rid of possible parasites, supoosed CRYPTO and other harmful stuff?

 

[Dimidiata]

Well, one way i can think of is to get a nice sized tub that all sumersable equipment and tank can fit into, use a 1:10 Water:bleach mixture and soak it for a day or so. Then give it a warm soak for a few days(try to make the water hot at first but no scaulding) to let any bleach residue soak off. Sun dry it all and then you should be disenfeccted. Thats how i handled TB in my fish tank anyways.

 

[RampantReptiles]

Chlorine/Bleach does not kill Crypto. The only way to disinfect is by using Ammonia.

 

[TokayKeeper]

I'd also recommend against using a 1:10 dilution of bleach to water. At that weak of a solution, you'd be better off cleaning everything with your own saliva. A 10% dilution of bleach within my microbiology lab, testing against many bacteria, resulted in no zone of inhibition; in other words that weak of a dilution was pure useless. If you're going to use bleach, I'd go with a minimum of a 30% solution.

AND...if you have access to academic papers, I'd look up the use of acidified bleach. At a 5% solution of acidified bleach plus 10-20 minute contact time (aka soaking), one can kill anthrax spores which are one of the harder bacteria nasties to kill. The disadvantage is the stuff is potent in smell and quite caustic on metals, including stainless steel up to and including high quality laboratory tools and instruments. Should you look up the use of acidified bleach and choose to use it, your use of it is at your own risk. There are other chemicals that can also be used, such as glutaraldehydes.