Extreme Ick
 

I have a 55g tank that has been set up for almost a year and running very smooth. In the tank I had 2 parrot's, 2 angels, a bala, 2 sailfin molly's, 4 tiger barbs, an albino bristlenose pleco, and a normal pleco. All the fish had been in the tank within the first month it was set up, so everything was well established. I noticed the bala scratching itself on the ornaments in the tank, but since I had only seen this once in the last few days I thought nothing of it. The problem is that the very next day we left for vacation and I had a friend (who is not a fish tank owner himself) come over to feed the fish everyday. At about day 4 into our trip he called to say the fish weren't looking very good and he didn't know what to do. I came home on day 7 to see that each and every fish in the aquarium had an intense amount of ick on them. I immediately raised the water temp and started treating with ick medicine but it didn't pay off. My fish started dying one by one until they were all gone. Now my question is this, I am going to get the tank reestablished obviously, but what do I do about the ick parasites that may still be in the tank. If I drain all the current water and take the gravel/plants/ornaments outside to sit in the sun for a few days would this be sufficient to kill the ick. The last thing I want to do is start all over to have the same parasites kill the new fish. Basically I need to know what to do from here as far as starting all over.

If the tank is still cycled, I would not do a complete tear down. I would add ammonia to the tank daily to feed the cycle and bump the tempt of the tank to 86 deg or above. A couple weeks of no fish and the tempt that high, should kill off all the ick.
When you add new fish from the store, chances are high that they will be carrying ick with them.

It's too late, I decided I didn't want to keep spending money on chemicals to treat a tank with no fish so I tore it down. Now I just need to know if I spray everything off and clean it as best as I can then let it sit in the sun for a couple days will that kill the ick?

Yep, that will work just fine.

Thanks for the help.