Before we talk about reefing, we want to take the opportunity to briefly outline the most important guidelines you need to be following to stay safe and healthy.

1) Wash your hands with soap and water. Do it thoroughly and for at least 30 seconds. Use hand-sanitizers when soap isn’t available.

2) Avoid putting your hands on your face.

3) Practice social distancing outside your home and keep 3 meters away from people when you are outside.

With that out of the way, we can know talk about one important consequence this can have on our aquariums, namely dipping your hands into your aquariums after using hand sanitizers. As we know, the aquatic life in our tanks is very sensitive to any chemical changes. This is one of the main reasons we go about doing all that parameter testing, to ensure that the chemistry in our tanks is as ideal as possible for our fish and corals. When you put your hands in your aquarium right after using soap or hand sanitizers, especially the scented ones, you wreak havoc on your aquarium’s chemistry! Just type in hand sanitizer in the reef2reef search tab, and you will see for yourself all the anecdotal reports written by fellow reefers of aquatic life dying from this mistake. The truth is that most of the ingredients in your soap or sanitizer are not dangerous to your aquarium, but all it takes is one or two dangerous additives, such as zinc or trace amounts of oil to start causing your problems

Now, the point of writing about this isn’t to tell you to stop using hand sanitizers! Again, safety and health come before anything else. This mistake has a very easy and simple solution: Always remember to wash your hands with water and rinse them well before putting your hands in your tanks. Even if you are using the regular unscented sanitizers, this precaution is a must for the sake of your aquatic life. The last thing you want during a lockdown is to spend all your time home with an empty aquarium! In case you somehow forget to heed this advice and dip your “sanitized” hands into the aquarium, keep in mind that using carbon in the tank helps minimize any contaminants left by soap and/or hand sanitizer residues.

As always, if you have any questions or feedback, please get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you!

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