• Looking to buy a cephalopod? Check out Tomh's Cephs Forum, and this post in particular shares important info about our policies as it relates to responsible ceph-keeping.

Take care when cleaning your tank

corw314

Colossal Squid
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Nov 20, 2002
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Not sure if we have a thread for this, we probably do but thought it was important to put a reminder about being careful not to get cut or scratched by coral in your tank. Yesterday, I did a water change and was pulling globs of hair algae off the coral. Later that day, I noticed my finger was bothering me. That night on the way home it felt hot and tight so when I got home I looked at it under a magnifier and saw a couple tiny scratches. Still was not alarmed but covered it with Neosporin and a band-aid and went to bed. Now usually a cut is almost healed when I do this but when I took the bandaid off the next morning, where the scratches and some redness had been, was purpleness. Still was not too alarmed so went to work, and had the Director of Nursing look at it. She sent me to the Emergency room. Turns out a scratch or cut from coral can become infected with bacteria from the tank which can lead to a massive infection very quickly. I am on 2 types of antibiotics and if its not improved in 3 days need to go see a hand surgeon. Who would have thought. Needless to say, after 20 something years of keeping saltwater tanks, I will be much more careful handling things.
 
After Sedna had a similar problem I redoubled my effort to remember to soap and water wash and put antibiotic on any small hand cuts I have after cleaning the tanks. About the time I get lazy or start forgetting someone comes up with this kind of problem.
 
If we don't have a thread for this, we certainly have a number of examples of infections from wounds while working with the tank (none from bites, as I remember).
Same goes for playing or swimming in the ocean if you have any sort of cut.
Hope you recover quickly!

Nancy
 
I can think of two other instances with members, a comment by Roy about a fellow diver and an article about a young girl struggling to save her hand/finger (can't remember which) after several years (I believe that one was FW). I can add a sticky like the bites thread and collect the TONMO posts if that is something we want to track.
 

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