7Enigma
Aquarium Advice Addict
Well last night as I was washing my sand for my new 20gallon tank I had a bit of a realization. I've spent WAY to much time reading this forum the last 2 weeks and occasionally come across the, "My fish suddenly died, all the measurable perameters were fine, I didn't change anything at all!". Obviously, when you have a large die off, its not just dumb luck, there is most definately a cause.
So last night I'm washing this sand by hand, and remember a lot of people get great joy out of hand feeding their fish, and it dawned on me. ANTIBIOTICS!
The big fad nowadays and a wonderful marketing scheme is to sell antibacterial everything. It's in hand cremes, its in soaps, its in dish detergents, etc. I could go off on a tangent about how I disaggree with the use of antibacterial products from a number of points of view (non antibacterial soaps and cleaners do the job just fine, less contamination of waste water producing antibacterial resistant strains, killing off of beneficial bacteria in your environment). Reread that last one, your environment as in YOUR HANDS!
Your hands absorb a bit of everything they touch, be it dyes, lotion, fish water (love that smell after working on a dirty tank?). It takes very little of these to wreck havoc on bacteria. This is why I don't recommend it for washing hands and such, your killing off EVERYTHING, not just bad things. So you go and do dishes, or go to the bathroom and wash your hands with this antibacterial soap. Some of these antibiotics make their way into or dry on the surface of your skin. Or even worse those dry sanitizers (ex Purell) that people love to use (though the bacteria is still on your skin, just dead. The antibiotics will just dry on your hands at HIGH concentrations since you didn't wash anything off.
It's feeding time. You decide to hand feed little bubba and next day they are keeling over, or your nitrogen parameters are out of whack. Think about how little chlorine needs to be in your tap water (ppm) to kill a lot of bacteria. Now imagine how much antibiotics could be on your hand during feeding, leeching into the water supply.
I can tell you, I will be making sure to NEVER use antibiotic hand products from now on for this reason. HTH
justin
So last night I'm washing this sand by hand, and remember a lot of people get great joy out of hand feeding their fish, and it dawned on me. ANTIBIOTICS!
The big fad nowadays and a wonderful marketing scheme is to sell antibacterial everything. It's in hand cremes, its in soaps, its in dish detergents, etc. I could go off on a tangent about how I disaggree with the use of antibacterial products from a number of points of view (non antibacterial soaps and cleaners do the job just fine, less contamination of waste water producing antibacterial resistant strains, killing off of beneficial bacteria in your environment). Reread that last one, your environment as in YOUR HANDS!
Your hands absorb a bit of everything they touch, be it dyes, lotion, fish water (love that smell after working on a dirty tank?). It takes very little of these to wreck havoc on bacteria. This is why I don't recommend it for washing hands and such, your killing off EVERYTHING, not just bad things. So you go and do dishes, or go to the bathroom and wash your hands with this antibacterial soap. Some of these antibiotics make their way into or dry on the surface of your skin. Or even worse those dry sanitizers (ex Purell) that people love to use (though the bacteria is still on your skin, just dead. The antibiotics will just dry on your hands at HIGH concentrations since you didn't wash anything off.
It's feeding time. You decide to hand feed little bubba and next day they are keeling over, or your nitrogen parameters are out of whack. Think about how little chlorine needs to be in your tap water (ppm) to kill a lot of bacteria. Now imagine how much antibiotics could be on your hand during feeding, leeching into the water supply.
I can tell you, I will be making sure to NEVER use antibiotic hand products from now on for this reason. HTH
justin