Safest way to disinfect my tanks

[Greg Nel]

When I refer to vines I mean genuine wood that is taken from a wine vineyard and dried out and commercially available from pet stores.
On your expert advice I will soak them in boiling water and scrub them then leave them to dry in the sun.

[Bogertophis]

When I refer to vines I mean genuine wood that is taken from a wine vineyard and dried out and commercially available from pet stores.
On your expert advice I will soak them in boiling water and scrub them then leave them to dry in the sun.

Perfect, I'm so glad you didn't ruin them with bleach. Wood of any kind absorbs & doesn't let go no matter how much you try to rinse off bleach, & it's toxic to reptiles.

One other thing you can spray on anything to kill germs (because it evaporates & leaves no residue) is plain old "rubbing" alcohol (isopropyl alcohol)- any drugstore has.

When you have only a few apparently healthy pets, you don't need the same level of disinfection as those who breed or are caring for sick animals. Each of the products
discussed (F10, bleach, Nolvasan/chlorhexidine, isopropyl alcohol) all have their uses, and effectiveness varies* somewhat since pathogens keep mutating & evolving.
(F10 is the newest of them) Just like with anti-bacterial hand soaps (for humans) the over-use can actually promote resistant germs, so IMO it's important not to use
more than you actually need. It's also important to keep all these from polluting groundwater (per product labels). I care very much about wildlife & drinking water.

*If I bought a used glass tank from someone though, I'd assume that whatever they had in it may have died from who-knows-what-contagious-disease (IBD? etc) and I'd
disinfect the daylights out of it before using. Someone gave me a large glass tank many years ago & I did just that: I wet it down with bleach solution & let it sit a while,
then dried & rinsed & dried, then sprayed with chlorhexidine & let it wait, then rinsed & dried, then sprayed with alcohol...(inside & out, by the way). But I've had a house-
full of herps for many years, plus I've bred many rodents for nearly as long, with never an outbreak of illness...unlike some others I know of. It's not always just "luck".