Funky Filter Cleaning

I would go with the bleach soak but maybe not that strong. Depends on how you are figuring the 10% , though. If you mean 1 part of the normal 6% chlorine bleach to 9 parts water, that may be strong enough to do in any of the soft media. But the soft media is also not terribly expensive so it depends on how you feel about cleaning it versus replacing. For cleaning things that bleach may damage like soft media, I go with something closer to a tablespoon in a gallon or so. That amount is plenty strong enough to get even hard shells like snails but does less damage to sponge and filter floss type stuff?
For wood and things that I'm not worried about eating it up, I go strong and long but do go easier on other stuff.

I'm not cleaning any media or wood. Just the filter and those trays that hold the media.

Ben Belton said:

I'm not cleaning any media or wood. Just the filter and those trays that hold the media.

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For just the hard canister and all that, your ten percent sounds good. I rarely actually measure as I normally don't know how much organic stuff is in wood or rock. It does get to be a guess as to how much I want to use as the chlorine will react with all the organic stuff so when doing rocks and wood, I just want to have plenty and just pour some. I'm sure a big old rock or hunk of wood won't be totally eaten like a shirt might, so more is better.
Once done soaking, I do a rinse which serves to dilute the remaining bleach down to close to tap water and just go from there. Drying lets the rest blow away just as it does from tap water that has only chlorine. Where the fear comes in bleach is that folks tend to think of it as different than what is in tap water. But the main difference is the amount of water diluting the chlorine.
That seems like a really simple thing to fix. Just mix more water!

After the bleach, white vinegar does a good job removing old mineral deposits if you have any of those. Just don't mix the vinegar with the bleach.

KayakJimW said:

After the bleach, white vinegar does a good job removing old mineral deposits if you have any of those. Just don't mix the vinegar with the bleach.

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Kayak makes a good point here. There are two phases to cleaning and for those two points, there are two good items to use, depending on what we want to do.
For cleaning mineral deposits which are often alkaline hard water deposits, vinegar is a weak acid and will do a super job on loosening and removing many of those deposits. But for sterilizing and killing germs, etc. vinegar is not the best. It actually is made by fermenting apples and contains many live bacteria when we buy it off the shelf. If stored for long, it will actually spoil as the bacteria grows.
For disease and germ killing bleach is the better choice. But as Kayak mentioned, the two should not be missed as it will release hazardous fumes.
Knowledge is power so using the right thing at the right time is very helpful.