Disinfecting a tank

I recently picked up a nice 20 gallon tank with a locking lid for 20 bucks off craigslist (score!:D) and it came with a couple items from the previous owner. There's a repticarpet? Some plastic branches and such and a wood hide (I can tell its from a pet store)

Here's my plan of attack:
-Bleach tank and plastics with a 1/2 cup to 1 gallon of bleach and water solution
-bake wood at 200-250 degrees for 2-3 hours (supervised)
-bleach the repticarpet? I don't really care for it I usually use aspen

The guy said he just kept frogs in it before but idk :/ Is this good enough for disinfecting so I can put one of my bps in?

Sounds pretty good. Just make sure you rinse everything really well after bleaching, so that no fumes remain. Personally, I'd ditch the carpet. It's kind of a pain.

Leave the carpet. attack sounds well thought out and will work well

Alright thanks (: I think I will just ditch the carpet.

Off topic from the disinfecting, but I have encountered another husbandry problem so ill just stick it here. Where I am placing the tank is a little far from an outlet :/ so essentially I would need a extension cord. So it'd basically be a UTH plugged into rheostat plugged into a extension cord plugged into a surge protecter plugged into a wall. Something tells me that might not be safe? Alternatively I could try to buy a different surge protecter with like a 10 ft cord. Suggestions?

Just remember effective disinfection REQUIRES cleaning first. Scrub the tank and products with soap and water thoroughly before disinfection. Other wise there is no point to disinfecting in the first place.

Some points on bleach as a disinfectant that maybe useful...

"If used for disinfecting purposes Bleach should NOT be stored longer than 3 months. When mixed with water the solution is only effective as a disinfectant for 24 hours."
clorox company information

"Surfaces must be pre-cleaned."

"...all disinfectants require pre-cleaning. Best practices recommend cleaning first and then disinfecting for optimal efficiency."

A. Culver, M. Feinberg et.al. Cleaning for Health Products and Practices for a Safer Indoor Environment.


Effective disinfection will insure that you are passing nothing from one animal to another. The really scary part is a new study has concluded that improper disinfection not only leads to disinfectant resistance but ALSO antibiotic resistance even where no antibiotics were introduced. (the test bacteria, is one of the causes of sepsis in people and animals)

NUI Galway research article Jan 2009 of Microbiology

Bleach 1:10 needs ten full mins of WET contact time to work.

Just a note on the wood hides - raw milk is pasteurized at 145*F for 30 minutes to kill mold and bacteria so 2 hours at 250*F is overkill. I wouldn't use a temperature above 180*F, any higher and you risk any water left internally in the hide turning into steam, which will either crack it or make it go boom from the pressure build-up.

For your electric I would go: extension cord to surge protector to THERMOSTAT to UTH. That way if you want to plug in lights or other electronics near your tank, you just use the surge protector for more outlets and you're not running more extension cords.

Personally I would toss everything except the tank and lid.

Then first clean and scrub the tank and lid with soapy water.
Let it dry then do a through disinfecting with chlorhexidine of F10.