DMSO reef safe?

kartrsu

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Unusual question I know. I plan on doing a mild dose of fenbendazole in my reef tank to kill hydroids. Was told fenbendazole dissolves horribly in water, but DMSO helps a lot. Been doing some light reading on DMSO, but are there reservations on it being reef safe in small quantity? Thanks!
 

Dkeller_nc

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OP: Be cautious with DMSO, if you don't know already. The material itself isn't terribly toxic, but it will easily pass through your skin, and carry anything dissolved in it along with it. Whenever I handle DMSO in the lab, it's with specific neoprene rubber gloves designed for handling solvents - the consumer equivalent is black, heavy duty janitor's gloves.

I wouldn't recommend handling DMSO with nitrile or latex gloves. Latex does provide some protection, but nitrile is relatively easily permeated by DMSO.
 
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kartrsu

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Humblefish does not recommend dosing in a reef tank: https://humble.fish/fenbendazole/
Here's another article advising against dosing in a reef: https://seahorse.com/faqs/fenbendazole-panacur/

The maximum solubility in DMSO is about 10 mg/mL (suggest warming a little).

Thank you Courtney. @twilliard did some work on fenbendazole to treat for hydroids in reef tanks and found it to be successful. From what I gather, the concentration he used is quite low at 1.5 mg / gal vs the 7.6 mg / gal. The victims are snails and softies for the most part. Fingers crossed. Here is the thread.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/here-it-is-fenbendazole-use-against-hydroids.214950/

OP: Be cautious with DMSO, if you don't know already. The material itself isn't terribly toxic, but it will easily pass through your skin, and carry anything dissolved in it along with it. Whenever I handle DMSO in the lab, it's with specific neoprene rubber gloves designed for handling solvents - the consumer equivalent is black, heavy duty janitor's gloves.

I wouldn't recommend handling DMSO with nitrile or latex gloves. Latex does provide some protection, but nitrile is relatively easily permeated by DMSO.

Good to know! I didn't know anything about DMSO proper handling. Will be extra careful and avoid pouring it.
 

Courtney Aldrich

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Thank you Courtney. @twilliard did some work on fenbendazole to treat for hydroids in reef tanks and found it to be successful. From what I gather, the concentration he used is quite low at 1.5 mg / gal vs the 7.6 mg / gal. The victims are snails and softies for the most part. Fingers crossed. Here is the thread.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/here-it-is-fenbendazole-use-against-hydroids.214950/



Good to know! I didn't know anything about DMSO proper handling. Will be extra careful and avoid pouring it.
Thanks for bringing to my attention. I will remember next time someone asks about fenbendazole. DMSO isn't dangerous on its own per se, but the problem as noted by Dkeller_nc is that it can carry chemicals right through the skin. This is called transdermal drug delivery! If you for instance had some toxins produced in your water, it could carry these right through your skin into your bloodstream - and bam, you're out cold.
 
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kartrsu

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Thanks for bringing to my attention. I will remember next time someone asks about fenbendazole. DMSO isn't dangerous on its own per se, but the problem as noted by Dkeller_nc is that it can carry chemicals right through the skin. This is called transdermal drug delivery! If you for instance had some toxins produced in your water, it could carry these right through your skin into your bloodstream - and bam, you're out cold.
Thank you for the clarification Courtney! So if I was to dose with fenbendazole, I would if this would make the med more potent since it will permeate the tissue of all animals more easily. Also, if I am to do a water change within 24 hours of dosing, can I even get my hands wet?
 

Courtney Aldrich

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Thank you for the clarification Courtney! So if I was to dose with fenbendazole, I would if this would make the med more potent since it will permeate the tissue of all animals more easily. Also, if I am to do a water change within 24 hours of dosing, can I even get my hands wet?
Once the DMSO is dissolved in 100+ L of water it will be too dilute to help. You have to directly apply DMSO to your skin to have any affect. Bodybuilders take steroids by dissolving the greasy steroids in DMSO and then rubbing the solution into their muscles! You don't have to worry about getting your hands wet once you have dosed the compound. If you want to remove fenbendazole from your system, you don't need to do a water change, but just add carbon. The carbon will removel fenbendazole out of your water like a dentist pulls out a tooth.
 
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kartrsu

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Once the DMSO is dissolved in 100+ L of water it will be too dilute to help. You have to directly apply DMSO to your skin to have any affect. Bodybuilders take steroids by dissolving the greasy steroids in DMSO and then rubbing the solution into their muscles! You don't have to worry about getting your hands wet once you have dosed the compound. If you want to remove fenbendazole from your system, you don't need to do a water change, but just add carbon. The carbon will removel fenbendazole out of your water like a dentist pulls out a tooth.
Awesome, thank you so much for the help again! Great information!
 

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I've always felt that the chemistry on this site is simply wonderful.

sunset above the clouds GIF
 

Randy Holmes-Farley

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As an aside, most libraries of small molecules used to test to see if they might be drugs are dissolved in DMSO since it dissolves so many molecules well. Since these libraries can have thousands to millions of molecules in them, no one can spend the time to determine the solubility of each one.

A small amount of the DMSO solution of each molecule is then added to some sort of test, often a cell based assay or an enzyme inhibition test, with the assumption that the small amount of DMSO is not impacting anything after it is diluted.
 

Dkeller_nc

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Awesome, thank you so much for the help again! Great information!
Yeah, my particular comment about DMSO specifically applied to the 100% DMSO liquid and whatever might be dissolved in it (in this case, fenbendazole), not a highly dilute solution in aquarium water. From what I can gather, fenbendazole isn't known to be highly toxic to humans, but it is also not approved for use in people. So it probably pays to be cautious, wear proper gloves, avoid getting it on your skin, and disposing of the solution after use and preparation to avoid another household member spilling it on their skin.

On the aquarium water change subject, I'll note that I almost always wear shoulder-length rubber gloves when performing water changes. Mine came from Drs. Foster and Smith, but these are probably equivalent. I'd note that I don't wear gloves out of fear of bacteria in the water (though some aquariums do contain vibrio sp), it's because all of my tanks have bristleworms that like to hang out in the algae that I'm removing. I'm not allergic to their spines, but it's dang irritating for a hour or two after getting stuck, so I wear gloves.
 

brandon429

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When I hear dmso I think cool rock lady homicide investigator and some loss of life on csi

and then I also think of the great surgical team wipeout from the 80s supposedly by human metabolic conversion of topical skin cream into dmso


id rather
 

JCTReefer

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@Randy Holmes-Farley
I used 15ml of DMSO do dissolve 9cc of Fluconazole. I dosed this in 212 gallons of water. Does DMSO ever dissipate from the water? Or is it there for good until massive water changes are done? Is there any concern with placing my bare hands in the tank? I got to thinking about this after the fact. Man, I really don't want anything toxic from the tank being absorbed through my skin, including Fluconazole.:confused: I tried reading everything I could on the web without many answers. And most of the stuff was WAY ABOVE MY HEAD!!!
 

Courtney Aldrich

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@Randy Holmes-Farley
I used 15ml of DMSO do dissolve 9cc of Fluconazole. I dosed this in 212 gallons of water. Does DMSO ever dissipate from the water? Or is it there for good until massive water changes are done? Is there any concern with placing my bare hands in the tank? I got to thinking about this after the fact. Man, I really don't want anything toxic from the tank being absorbed through my skin, including Fluconazole.:confused: I tried reading everything I could on the web without many answers. And most of the stuff was WAY ABOVE MY HEAD!!!
I wouldn't worry. 9 mL of DMSO in 212 gallons of water gives a final DMSO concentration of 0.002%. This will not increase absorption of the tank water through your skin. DMSO cannot be easily removed and can probably only be removed gradually through water changes. Carbon might be able to absorb a small amount, but DMSO is very polar and carbon optimally removes nonpolar organic compounds. DMSO can be metabolized by bacteria to DMS (dimethyl sulfide), which is volatile and as Wikipedia says, " has a characteristic disagreeable odor. It is a component of the smell produced from cooking of certain vegetables, notably maize, cabbage, beetroot, and seafoods. It is also an indication of bacterial contamination in malt production and brewing"
 

JCTReefer

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I wouldn't worry. 9 mL of DMSO in 212 gallons of water gives a final DMSO concentration of 0.002%. This will not increase absorption of the tank water through your skin. DMSO cannot be easily removed and can probably only be removed gradually through water changes. Carbon might be able to absorb a small amount, but DMSO is very polar and carbon optimally removes nonpolar organic compounds. DMSO can be metabolized by bacteria to DMS (dimethyl sulfide), which is volatile and as Wikipedia says, " has a characteristic disagreeable odor. It is a component of the smell produced from cooking of certain vegetables, notably maize, cabbage, beetroot, and seafoods. It is also an indication of bacterial contamination in malt production and brewing"
Thanks for your response. No matter 15ml or 9ml It is a very small amount. It just had me worried a bit.
 

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