Stagnant fish tank - HELP!

[New_Natural_Mom]

My DH has a 75 gallon freshwater fish tank that has sat dormant for, well, years now.  :(  All the fish died, it had/has MASSIVE amounts of fish poop in it, and it still has most of the water in it.  He just didn't take care of it anymore.  We both want to empty it out and get rid of it, but I am really nervous about opening it up to the air in the house.  Could there be bad bacteria and stuff in there like Legionaires (sp?) or other disease causing agents? How should be handle this?  Anyone have any advice? He still wants to be able to use the tank so we can't throw bleach or anything in there.  I am afraid to even open the top to expose whatever is in there to the air.  We can't just pick it up and dump it outside b/c the thing would shatter.  Help!

[~Adorkable~]

Why can't you throw bleach in there?
Seems like the best thing to do is that, then clean it reallly well a few times after that.
Bleach breaks down pretty fast, it's not going to taint it forever, as for any wood or porous things currently in the tank, I would say they are already ruined and can't be reused
And maybe decide if he let it get this bad, whether he should use it again?

[New_Natural_Mom]

He said that bleach would make it unusable.  I will look into that further.

[nd_deadhead]

You can put bleach in the tank, you just have to REALLY make sure that you rinse it out.

The chlorine in bleach is toxic to fish, but it does disappear. If you sell the tank, make sure you tell the new owners that you used bleach to clean it, so they can take extra precautions before they add fish. Just letting the tank sit full of water, with a good dose of dechlorinator, should do the trick, but it doesn't make sense for you to do that if you aren't going to use the tank yourselves.

Good luck, and congratulations on getting this taken care of! We sold a 75-gallon tank (we had two other large tanks int he house), and it made our family room seem so much bigger!