Do you stick your hands in your reef tank?

[H3rm1tCr@b]

I stick my hands whenever it's necessary. I feed by hand every day, my critters don't like tongs much so I much prefer to feed with fingers. I have hand fed my pistol shrimp, ex clown fish, anemone crab, ex emerald crab, all the ex urchins, my lps coral, my various anemone shrimp, and ex cleaner and peppermint shrimp. Even my watchman goby took some once from my fingers. Their honestly scared of tongs anyway so might as well.

 

[ChadHorn]

I try not to..

but it's mainly because the bristleworms. Have this fear of accidentally touching on when near my rock

Going to wear the thickest gloves I can find when moving the rock to my new tank.

Your fear is not unfounded. I inherited a tank with a bristleworm/fireworm explosion and was stung by two when I was wrestling with a third 10" one. I fully suspect the whole colony is after my head now (not to mention that I'm highly allergic to them).

 

[Efrain Rodriguez]

I think anything over my wrist and my current skimmer goes off the rails. Nothing else is affected

My skimmer does the same thing

 

[vetteguy53081]

Only if i have to !!

 

[vetteguy53081]

Only if i have to. Despite my tank being deep, I tend to utilize aqua tongs or grippers which I have various sizes

 

[TracyLynn]

Yes, I put my hands in my tank when cleaning or moving stuff around. I do wear gloves when handling zoas, palys & mushrooms that I have.

 

[Nanaue]

If something needs to be fixed, such as a broken off frag, spot feeding corals, or that one time my neon dottyback got stuck under a rock, I do put my hands into the tank, though I only do so when absolutely necessary. I always wash my hands really well with non-scented soap, wash under the fingernails, then rinse up to my shoulders on both arms in RO water for at least 60 seconds as my tank is incredibly deep and can get to shoulder depth if something is in the sand. I think I'm a little overboard with my cleaning ritual, but I have not seen negative effects from my hands, at least.

 

[Slicktop]

I have never wore gloves, wash hands most of the time before ...but I do think if you can limit the number of times it helps ..

 

[luke fortunato]

I put my hand in once in a while, but my clowns hate it and bit me so I try to not do it often.

 

[Currdawg12]

I try to keep my hands out of the tank as much as possible, but i have a hard time finding tweezers long enough to be helpful in my deep Waterbox. Evertything I see is stainless steel and gets rusty even if cleaned and dried. Any recommendation?

plastic everything

 

[Currdawg12]

my hands are sweaty 24/7 so i do it when i need to add a little salt

 

[LARedstickreefer]

My old LFS guy always has his bare hands in his tanks doing stuff and never has any issues. He’s not the lotion type so there’s that.

 

[Phildago]

I absolutely do not wear gloves and never will. I wash my hands before going in and after.

I think it always does harm when I put my hands in the tank, however this harm is the lesser of two evils when I'm moving a piece of coral out of the way of an anemone or something along those lines.

 

[All Mixed Up]

I can't think of a single LFS employee, Petco/Petsmart employee, or even coral farm employee wearing gloves.

Matter of fact, I was just at 3 very well known coral stores in Orlando over the weekend, and not a single employee was wearing gloves when collecting frags for customers.

Im not saying this is case for not wearing gloves, just an observation. I've personally never worn gloves, but always wash my hands with as hot of water as I can stand before and after being in the tank.

 

[TD13]

@Ryanbrs @randyBRS - BRS Investigates?!?!

 

[Scrubber_steve]

1. Clean your hands & arms with soap & water, rinse thoroughly & dry.

2. Next, use some tank water to rub all over your hands & arms, then dry with clean towel.

3. stick your hands into the aquarium & let the fish know whose the boss.

 

[Cristy17]

I have my ungloved hand in the tank several times a day. I have reaching tools but sometimes they can’t reach to what I need to do. I do see that the corals seem to do better when I travel and a fellow reefer/friend takes care of the tank and never reaches in the tank.So not to change the subject I thought this may be a good opportunity to warn this forum of what happened to me in Nov. 2019. I helped a fellow reefer clean his very DSB tanks (30+), that had been neglected for a long time. Most were acrylic so there was a lot of scrubbing. I had an open cut and received many more as I scrubbed add hit live rocks. After 7 hours of doing this, I went home. He had mentioned that he doesn’t keep soap where the tanks are (2 car garage with its own HVAC system) so as not to risk contaminating the tanks. That night my hand began to swell. This was a Tues., by Fri I had to have hand surgery to flush inside my pointer finger. The doctor made two incisions and flushed inside the incisions with saline in a syringe. He then ran a tubing through the incisions for drainage. I believe the bacteria in the very old sand beds and live rock is what caused the infection. I was on 2 very strong antibiotics that made be feel like crap. I have never had this issue with any of my tanks and I have been in the hobby for 20 + years. So now, if I am going to work in dirty sand beds, I will not hesitate to glove up. The healing time took at least a month and I still cannot make a fist comfortably. Please don’t get complacent like I did.

 

[Allan3]

Whenever I can’t reach things with my tweezers I will put my hands in the Tank. I wash my hand/arms really good with Soap & then put gloves on to help reduce getting any containment’s in the water.

 

[PhreeByrd]

I'm with those who get into their tanks barehanded as little as possible. As I see things:
1. Your hands and arms are rife with bacteria, viruses, dead skin, hair, oils, and who knows what else unless you scrub them thoroughly with soap and water.
2. You do not want to put your hands into the tank water after washing with soap and water no matter how well you rinse them. Almost all soaps contain lingering perfumes and chemicals that rinsing does not easily remove.
3. Washing with just water really isn't washing. It's just rinsing off some of the bigger junk. Better than nothing, but still not so good.
4. An open cut could indeed lead to a very serious infection. Even if rare, that's a serious and unnecessary risk.
5. Yeah, some people at my LFS do this, too. But they do it all day long, so their hands are constantly rinsed in tank water.

Your local farm supply store sells shoulder-length, disposable/recyclable polyethylene livestock exam gloves that provide decent protection for both yourself and your tank water. They'll fit over long-sleeve shirtsleeves so you don't need to change clothes or roll up your sleeves before getting into the tank. I buy them in a box of 100, so they're typically about $.10-.15 each. They're sometimes sold as "OB Exam Sleeves", so even city folks will probably get the idea of their intended purpose.