My hand is in the tank...a LOT

Since I got my tank going in the reef direction, I have noticed that I have been putting my hand and arm in my tank a lot lately. Especially since the sun coral requires a lot of feeding...every day or every other day. I'm trying to train that one to open its polyps more, about 8pm. I know there are bacteria on our skin, and certainly it gets in the tank. My hand/arm is in there almost every day, for one thing or another (moving a coral out of the way of my roaming anemone, but the anemone has chilled for now, or feeding a coral, or scraping the really hard to remove green algae off the glass, or scraping red slime off the rocks...). Is this really bad? Should I back off? I make it a point to not put my hand in there at all somedays. Everything seems to be doing fine, my skimmer is about the only thing that reacts (the foam DROPS). ????????

 

Yep, back off a bit. Of course, there is no way that you can run a reef tank without putting your hand in there once in a while. What you can do to prevent introducing any chemicals or germs through your hand is to rinse it with water, then dry it with a clean towel that wont fill your hand with fuzzy crap from it and you should be fine. Also make sure your nails are clean (underneath) as dirt or any other stuff will not get flushed out from there easily and could introduce crap on there.

To prevent placing your hand in there to feed the suns, you can look into the Kent Marine Sea Squirt, that will eliminate putting your hand in there. I can't afford right now, so the baster will do. ;D

 

yes the oils off your hands can stop the skimmer for doing its job and make the fish or other animals nervous just let it ride out

 

Not to mention the itchy burning rashes and dry skin. Should at least be wearing gloves.

Doug

 

I've got arm length gloves that I use, they work great. I think they were made my coralife.

 

I have a pair of the heavy duty aquarium gloves...but they are too bulky to do anything but moving rocks into general areas...lol

 

Mine are a bit bulky too. I'm sure you could find some long medical gloves on ebay.

 

ya my hands have been in the tank lately to i got a coral frag pack from live aquaria and not havin the epoxy im tryin to find somewhere they wont fall or moving them to a better spot. my cleaner shrimp attack my arm and go picking at it though now it feels weird when they do that

 

My cleaning shimp have been hurting me lately. I'm not sure what they are doing.

About the epoxy, have you used it before? I just picked some up and tried using it, doesn't stick to anything. I bought the coraline coloured one, it's white when it dries. Have you had problems with it before?

 

hmm it shuld be sticking i used it quite a while ago and it worked fine im not sure what the problem is with it not working though