I'll start with the equipment. Soak it for about 24 hours in Clorox water. Then soak it a couple of days in Vinegar with some water as well. Vinegar will remove all smell of Clorox from the equipment. Then after that rinse it and rinse it and rinse it. Soak it for 24 hours, rinse and rinse again, soak and rinse some more. Do this many times over so that you make sure that you get every last drop of Clorox out of it or it will kill the fish. If after this you still smell the Clorox, soak it some more in Vinegar to which you might add a bunch of Baking Soda. That will also remove smells very well. If you happen to have a dishwasher you can also run it through that a couple of times in addition to the above. DO NOT ADD SOAP to your dishwasher when doing this. If you have one of the types that heat the water, like mine, the extreme high heat of it will kills all the bacteria as well. Again, though, after washing it in the dishwasher, make sure that you soak and rinse it in clear water. You can have some lingering residues from the dishwasher soap on it as well.

CLEANING WITH SALT

Now for the tank. First of all, wash the tank out real good with NON-IODIZED salt. Use the salt like you would use any abrasive type cleanser such as Comet Cleanser. Use a damp rag and sprinkle a large amount of salt on the rag. Scrub the tank with that. That will clean all the Algae and stuff off the tank. Rinse the tank real well and wipe it out. The salt will hurt nothing as I keep salt in my tank at all times anyway at the rate of 1 tablespoon per 5 gallons. Salt is safe for all fish. I have no Salt Water Tanks.

Now for a couple of other things. Heat, high heat kills anything. You could fill your tank after washing it with water, turn on your heater and heat it to about 95-100 degrees for a couple of days. This should not hurt your seals at all. A friend of mines heater went haywire while he was on vacation for 2 weeks. He came back and found all his fish dead and the tank at 98 degrees. He has no idea how long it had been that way, but he did say that the fish were literally cooked so it must have been that way for several days. After you do this for a couple or 3 days, then drain your tank. Completely dry it out and leave it bare for a week. The parasitic, fungal type diseases and Ick require a host animal/fish to survive. Without that, they will not live. Therefore with nothing in the tank, any remaining remnants of those types of things will die.

USING MEDICATIONS

That should do the trick for you. If you are still concerned, then you can fill the tank and treat the water with the different medications for a week to 10 days. That would kill everything as well. However, that would probably be a total waste of money if you do the other above mentioned things. If you do that, I would suggest using the various products by Mardel Laboratories. All those drugs can be safely used together and kill virtually every disease, parasite, fungus and Ick known. These are the drugs that I have had the best success with. In my hospital tank I always have the following drugs in it. Coppersafe, Maracide, Maroxy, Maracyn and Maracyn 2. In addition to those, I have Quick Cure and NON-IODIZED salt as well. Basically if a fish gets ill in my house, I hit them with everything but the kitchen sink.