Skin Irritation During Tank Cleaning

[KeeganDuBrown]

When cleaning my tank every week I sometimes brush against palyathoa, or touch little critters in the bottom of bucket that get syphoned out of the gravel and I want to put back into the tank.

This never caused any issues for me before, but over the past several months this has started to cause contact-Dermatitis (swelling, hotness, redness, itchiness) on my fingers that lasts for 3-5 days. Benadryl seems to help, but I'm sick of spending half the week in a benadryl-fog...

I think I need to start wearing gloves more often, but this can make it tricky to do some things like ripping up nuisance algae or picking little starfish/copepods out of the gunk in the bottom of the waste water bucket.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Any techniques to neutralize your skin after exposure or methods to reduce conditions after it's too late?

 

[coralfishreef]

There are a variety of tools that can keep hands out of the tank such as Aqua Tongs, PikStik, long tweezers, arm length gloves, coral feeding tubes, nitrile or vinyl gloves, and turkey basters.

Some of these may be worth a try.

 

[Nickjr]

I use arm length gloves or if I can rinse the slime off in the tank water while working on corals. If I leave the slime on my skin it gets irritate. I also use tools, long handle 8 inch tweezers, long plastic 24 inch grabber. I wash three times with soap when done but have not tried to calm skim with any treatments.

 

[gobyvin]

I am not particularly susceptible to these irritations but have experienced them too.
I rinse any slimes sloughed by upset inverts with cold fresh water if I get them on bare skin while working, right away. I use gloves or tools when I can, at all times, but gloves do make things clumsy.
Soap and hot water always when done.

 

[KeeganDuBrown]

Thanks everyone for the advice, I will give these a try moving forward.

 

[MeezusReef]

I almost always have the swelling and itchiness when brushing up against anemone's. Sometimes to the point where my finger will swell a considerable amount. This also happens when I come in contact with my lobo's. If I am going to touch any of these, I will wear gloves for sure.

I also use tong's to keep my hand out of the tank.

 

[dharmajedi]

Out of the blue I have also been getting rashes after being in my tank. In 20 years its never happened before. I actually started using reef crystals recently and I almost wonder if its related. I know it's long shot but it does seem weird.

 

[LaxFrags]

I’m allergic to the cold, literally. Called Cold Utaria, every time I put my hands in the tank I get all itchy and rashy , even though it’s warm. Tough with a hobby like this lol