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Hi
Please could you give me some advice here.
In 2003 i started a SW tank (juwel rio 180). i ran it for 3 years with a mixture of success and failure.
(fish were fine powder blue tang, clown and damsel) inverts tended to only last a year, ( cleaner shrimp, smails herbits) coral not good. But i put that due to the in-adequate light. 3 T8 bulbs totaling 90watts over 40 imp gal.
Also what i have since found out is that grotto rock is a bi product of the iron industry and i had a couple of small bits in the tank.
I moved house and stored the tank for a year, then started it's up again last month only FW.
Now i've got the SW bug again and i'm wanting to use it for SW.

Whats the best way of scrubing the tank clean ready for SW use again?
I know that copper is death for inverts but i have never used any white spot treatment. Only Tetra Easy balance, Aquasafe and melafix.
So i'm thinking to rid the tank of fresh water pollution should be "too" bad.
However, i'm worried about the iron that will have leaked from the grotto rock.
I'm aware that that the tank will need a hell of a good scrub ad blasting.
Is there any chemicals that can help?

The heavy metals as far as I know can only penetrate into the silicone. There's no real chems or anything you can use to clean that out. You can however resilicone the tank. Depending on how expensive the tank is, it might be easier to grab a new one and use your old one for FO.

Also, if you do choose to set up your old tank, running carbon full time would help pull out any heavy metals that might annoy your inverts.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

Matt already answered the heavy metals but the few times that I cleaned my tank I added about a cap of bleach to a bucket of water and washed the tank out and then rinsed very good and then let the tank air dry. The air dry is sufficient but as a safety factor Add some dechlorinator and let it run a few days. This is what I did to clean my tanks out. It wont solve the heavy metals but it will steralize your tank and get rid of any parasites or disease in the tank. Make sure you let the tank air dry completely. This is important.

What about the water conditioners that neutralize heavy metals? Will they work for iron? If you really want to remove the iron, and are patient, but dont want to reseal the tank, is to add plants to the FW tank, and let them use it as fertilizer. Get fast growing plants like wisteria and floating plants. However, only the redder plants like red temple or red ludwiga, will use the iron, i think.....Im not so sure, so ask around. Just wanted to give my 2 cents!

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whats the best way of reducing the risk of copper?
will the water chems that neut heavy metals neutrilize copper if it were in my tap water

SeaChem CupriSorb seems to be talked about as a good copper absorber. It can even be recharged. I haven't tried it, but it even mentions that you should be able to keep inverts in a tank that once had copper meds in it with the use of CupriSorb. Unless copper IS in your tap water I wouldn't be worried since, as you mentioned, you didn't use copper meds. Although people say copper absorbs into the silicone I haven't really heard anyone ever mention about having fish deaths attributable to copper absorbed into silicon, not that I'm looking for such disaster stories. On the other hand, copper does absorb easily into stones and sand, and that presents a greater problem compared to the little bit of silicon people tend to have in their saltwater tanks. Moral is don't re-use stones or sand from tanks that have been treated with copper unless it's been a long time since they've been treated.

If it's in your tap, even though CupriSorb can be recharged you might just go all out and get Reverse Osmosis or some other water purification system to remove all the other possible nasties.

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The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.