will equipments washed with hand soap kill my fish?

[reeferdugong]

Hello fellow reefers,

yesterday i got 2 small clown fishes and put them in my 5G quarantine tank. It's too early too say anything but they seem to be doing well, just not eating that much.

For the hiding spot, i tossed in a PP elbow inside. One thing that bothers me right now is that the PP elbow had rubber sealing inside it, so i removed it. It had grease where the rubber sealing was, so i washed it with hand soap. I rinsed the elbow a few times, and dipped it in a sink full of water for a few hours, and rinsed it again afterwards before it went into the tank.

I heard any kind of detergent or soap is harmful to fish. Im worried that it will harm them. Should i remove the elbow?

They are my very first fish and i fell in love with them already and i want the best for them.


Thanks guys for helping out a newbie!

 

[Ron Reefman]

Soap is harmful, but it can be completely rinsed off and the part should be safe to use.

 

[Flippers4pups]

As Ron stated above, rinsing throughly would be okay. Hand soaps can contain skin conditioners aside from the detergent. It's best to use a detergent such as Dawn liquid detergent when needing to clean items that will come in contact with our tanks.

The best cleaners would be vinegar and water for these items over detergents.

 

[BackToTheReef]

I 2nd flippers' Welcome!

 

[Timfish]

Welcome! What they said above.

As an aside, I would in general avoid any antimicrobial soaps or productrs that use some other active ingrediant than alcohol. Some of them have been shown to degenerate when exposed to light into dioxins which arre not good to have anywhere. Unlike most antimicrobial ingrediants the various alcohols are bioreactive and will be broken down fairly quickly by the microbial processes in our systems so even if a small amount does get into a tank it's not going to stay around long. Even better is using hydrogen peroxide as small amounts in a system has some benefit.

 

[reeferdugong]

thanks guys for the help! yeah i gave it a really good rinse. i hope its not leaching any chemical from the soap residue.
Im still on the fence whether i should remove it and just buy a 10$ aquarium cave decoration or something.

Oh yeah the elbow floats so attach it with magnet hehe

 

[Flippers4pups]

thanks guys for the help! yeah i gave it a really good rinse. i hope its not leaching any chemical from the soap residue.
Im still on the fence whether i should remove it and just buy a 10$ aquarium cave decoration or something.

Oh yeah the elbow floats so attach it with magnet hehe

Just rinse them with some vinegar/water solution, dry and place back in the tank.

 

[jda]

I regularly use an old dish waser to clean fish tank stuff for year and years. I use normal dish soap and sometimes some Muriatic Acid to clean stuff. It rinses off during the last cycle. Everything is fine. If you rinsed it, then you are good.

 

[fish farmer]

thanks guys for the help! yeah i gave it a really good rinse. i hope its not leaching any chemical from the soap residue.
Im still on the fence whether i should remove it and just buy a 10$ aquarium cave decoration or something.

Oh yeah the elbow floats so attach it with magnet hehe

Rinse, rinse, rinse. If there is no soapy residue or "floral" smell you should be fine. I've used many soapy disinfecting cleaners through out my fish culture career, as long as you rinse them well they are fine to use.

 

[reeferdugong]

thanks you guys so much! it looks like i was being overly worried. i really dont want to mess up my first tank ever- i gave everything a quick rinsing with rodi water hoping that i wont introduce any harmful chemical to the QT tank