Why you should not clean your reef tank w/o gloves

[Joseph9123]

Hello all, I haven't been on here in ages and just want to share some disturbing info about caring for reef tank without gloves. This sunday i went crazy redoing my aquascape, creating caverns and arch ways. Taking out all this live rock that been at the bace for 6 yrs and moving corals around to different locations. Done this a bunch of time in the past yrs. I always knew i should wear gloves due to an incident that happen two yrs ago. I had a 80 head frogspawn and 60 head torch coral fall on to each other while moving my aquascape. I readjusted them and got some of thier chemical slime on my hand over a cut. It stung me like my hand was on fire for a minute where i was cut so i washed it out with soap. To make a long story short, that same night i went out drinking on 6th st. I counted 8 shorts, alot of beers and mixed drink and no buzz at all. the entire time my hand was throbbing and all i can focus on that. Disturbing as it is, we never really heard of this happening to anyone else and incident that something really bad happen while touching corals. We all know how toxic they are and how the chemicals can cause advese effect on other corals.

Back to what happen this weekend. Well i finish my aquascape around 10:30pm, by 2am I had a fever and thought I had the flu. I was shivering really bad and having weird dreams. I turn off my Ac and fan bc i was freezing so bad, and check my temp. i was 101 degree and took some tylenol thinking I was getting a very bad cold or flu. Couldnt really sleep well at all, still shivering the the entire night. Next morningI was getting ready for work, my neck, shoulder and back was verrrrry sore and aching, I was sweating alot and light headed. Took some cold meds, took a very hot shower an went to work. My head was throbbing and my throat was hurting again thinking i was getting the flu. So I ask to leave work to go to the dr. and ofcourse they dont want me back till they are sure i dont have the flu or something. The dr. office my temp was back to normal but everything still hurt adn i feel a little worst. what the hell is going on. They did the nose rinse to see if i had flu or cold and today i got the result and nothing was wrong with me. In the blood work it was like had some chemical reaction inside my body. Some elements, I'm going to get that later from the doc. It just dawn on me about the fish tank and everything started to make sense.... So I'm sharing this with everyone. Take my incident and take it seriously, WEAR GLOVES when haddling any corals, or live rock in a fully established system so this will never happen to you.

-Joseph

[+Razor]

Thanks for sharing. I hope you get feeling better soon.

~Shawn

[+dapettit]

Hey Joesph,

Glad to see you on the board again. Did you ever figure out what caused the problem or was it just re-arranging the tank in general. I hope your are felling better. Thanks for the warnings.

Dave-

[Joseph9123]

Well nothing is for sure about really what caused it. I feel alot better today, thank you! I was moving the live rock had alot of feather dusters underneath them and some of the LPS I was moving had some of thier slime. I accedently broke one of my SPS that poked me pretty good. So any of those could have caused such a bad reaction. We all know how toxic zoas and palys , toxic enough to kill you if digested. What about all the rest, my harsh learning lesson and careless that cause this to happen. Just be safe and make sure to take your time with your tank when adjusting.

-Joseph

[+ACampbell]

Hey Joeseph! good to see you online. Glad you are feeling better. That frogspawn seems like the likely culprit.

[Bill B]

Hey Joeseph! good to see you online. Glad you are feeling better. That frogspawn seems like the likely culprit.

Well rack up another danger that I didn't know about. What is the 'problem' with euphelia? I seem to be reaching in and rearranging all of my variations fairly often. They are just stuck in various holes and more frequently that I like, one of my clean up crew will knock it onto the sand.

Thanks

Bill

[AndrewT]

ive had this happen with my hammers before. not to that extent but ive got quite a sting when ive had an open cut and messed with them. theyre pretty painful

[manhorsedog]

better yet never put your hands in your tank with an open wound gloves or not. Lesson learned the hard way but still learned.

Glad to see everything is ok and thank you for sharing.

[Gonzobob]

Freaking Palys! So I wanted to bring this back to top as a reminder anyone can use. I finally decided to be more proactive about some hair algae I've got in one of my nanos. Darn stuff was on a frag rack and making a mess. Well, frag by frag I held each with one hand and used with the other pulled off the algae. Without thinking I started wiping the 'harvested' algae on the back of the arm holding the frag. All went well till I got to a couple of paly frags and thought nothing of the frags sliming a little as I worked. A couple of minutes later I noticed my arm burning. Well, a quick trip to the sink and lesson remembered.

[Zarathustra2]

Just to add on I have a candy cane (close relative to Euphyllia) that will sting the heck out of me if the feeder tentacles are out and I brush up against them. I found out about it when I had to move a paly that fell down under it and brushed up against it along my arm which proceeded to swell to almost twice it's normal size.