OUCH! Have you ever been injured while reefing?

[MombasaLionfish]

Eel bite! Lucky for me it was a golden dwarf moray and nothing large.

Yikes

 

[Kimberely]

I wouldn't exactly call it injured but I've been stung by my mini maxi once that actually took a tiny bit of skin off. And my mocha clown female bit me hard enough to draw blood once. Nothing serious.

 

[Ulee]

I deal with mature reef rock from hand me downs and break downs and scared to cut myself, and get some odd infection..I try to wear gloves as often as i can

 

[leorii2000]

Ouch. Back, Disk went out getting the 200 gal in.

Some minor burns from friendly coral That’s all. I’m trying to be careful.
The most recent pain was from a cutting tool that cut trough the tip of my finger.

 

[Jim_Browning]

Timely question. Just last night I was re-positioning a mushroom and one of my larger emerald crabs commenced a major defense of his position. Just had to "grin and bear it" while waiting for the the cement to set. Fortunately his claw wasn't large enough to get a solid grip on me.

 

[Fallling]

Ibuprofen +1

Hydrocortisone - Bad idea, this could make it worse as it thins the dermis

Avoid Neosporin (triple antibiotic) if cut is deep (use polysporin or plain bacitracin ointment)

If pain persists, you can always buy a product that contains lidocaine otc (Aspercream is a good choice as some formulations contains aspirin to help with pain absorbed through the skin. If unable to find you can use this....

You can also do a makeshift ointment: Crush using a mortar and pestle (bottom of a glass works too) Ibuprofen 200mg 15 tablets/per 1 oz and suspend it in Aquaphor, Petroleum Jelly, or Eucerin Cream. Apply it directly and rub into skin around the wound every 2 hours until the pain subsides.

Pain is not the problem but rather itchiness like you get from a mosquito bite hence why I use OTC Cortizone. I am aware there are possible side effects of extended use, so I do use it sparingly and never for extended periods. I'll have to keep your other suggestions in mind though if I do experience pain.

 

[leorii2000]

Nipped by pliers while fragging.

 

[Beth Villmow]

I have never been stung our hurt other then small cuts and nicks from working with live rock, scrubbing sumps, etc. However, I was working at my LFS moving hammer frags from one rack to a rack beside it, and all of a sudden when I reach down to grab a frag, my pinkie finger suddenly exploded in pain. It felt like I'd been stung by a wasp. I jerked away, and looked but there was nothing on my finger, no marks of anything. I went and rinsed my hand in the sink, and after a few minutes the pain died down.

I didn't think about it or feel it for the rest of the day until I went to drive home. My finger started aching and hurting again and it was very swollen and red and there was a gouge taken out of it. I couldn't bend it without pain. I was baffled! Where had the gouge come from? I know I didn't do anything else to hurt my finger that day. That night was painful until I took ibuprofen and this morning it was still red and swollen and hurting. Hydrocortisone cream and some ibuprofen took most of the pain away but it looks like the gouge is deeper. It has a very wierd "scab" as it's not like a normal scab. It's very soft and an odd color. If it's not better in a few days I'm going to go to the doctor. I've asked some reefing friends and none have anything like this happen before. Does anyone have any idea what might have happened? FYI I checked and there were no bristle worms, vermetid snails, sharp skeletons, etc. I have a friend who gets stung all the time by LPS but they're like tiny mosquito bites, nothing like this.

Anyways, I was curious how many people have been injured and how severly while reefing. Share a picture if you can, and describe what happened!

You need to see a Dr before it gets any worse! A friend of mine was "stung" and was infected thru a hang nail. He was in the hospital for almost a month!

 

[Mikedawg]

I did suffer a broken heart when my Seasons' Greetings monti "failed to thrive" for the first several weeks. It's better now, lol

 

[Rich Klein]

The only injury so far is a beaten up wallet

LOL - I should change my vote from not to yes

 

[andrewkw]

I got bit by a cuttlefish once, it barely broke the skin but I was scared since it's not a common thing to happen. Also stung by a lion fish (dwarf). I had him for years and just once he grazed my hand. For me anyway it was comparable to a bee sting but obviously I had no idea if I was allergic or not. Lots of bristleworm stings and various minor injuries building or breaking (moving) things.

 

[cracker]

I got stuck speared good by my Long spine urchin That hurt like Hades for a while.

 

[Haydn]

I was cleaning the front glass of my tank with a cloth a few years ago when my large pajama tang swam between my hand and the glass, I didn't think anything about it until I looked down and the aquarium water was red! I still have the scar on my wrist where the tang slashed it.

 

[Fotocha]

Pain is not the problem but rather itchiness like you get from a mosquito bite hence why I use OTC Cortizone. I am aware there are possible side effects of extended use, so I do use it sparingly and never for extended periods. I'll have to keep your other suggestions in mind though if I do experience pain.

If you're itching Benadryl is your first line. I don't doubt you would use it sparingly; just considering we don't know what caused it yet I would refrain from it.

 

[mattzang]

I have never technically been injured reefing but I was hurt at my job at a lfs. A customer wanted to get a better look at one of the eels that we had. It was a more aggressive eel, (the type with a pointier snout) so when I used my hand to try and swoosh him out of his lair he responded by crunching down on one of my fingers. The 70 gallon tank instantly turned red with my blood. I calmly closed my hand into a fist and told the customer that I needed to get a bandaid, LOL. When I got to the office and surveyed the damage, his 3 rows of razor teeth had cut me to the bone. I washed the wound well, smothered it with neosporin and butterflied it shut. That was 16 years ago and the scar is not even visible anymore.

did the guy buy the eel at least? i think i'd guilt buy it at that point

 

[rockskimmerflow]

Having owned a maintenance company for almost 7 years nows (goodness gracious time flies) I've been hit by all manner of injuries in the line of duty. Worst would be a toss up between having the tip of my finger bitten off by a Stars and stripes puffer while my hand was about 4 inches above the surface of the water and the client distracted me, or when I took 3 of the dorsal spines of a large foxface in the side of the hand - beats the pain from a lionfish sting by a country mile and lasts a lot longer too. In less instantly painful cases, but probably worse in terms of danger, there's been the infection that spread up my arm in red streaks about 12 hours after I was stung by a neon hammer coral in a deep cut left by an aggressive clown tang. And possibly more dangerous still, the few near electrocutions that have occurred - that's still my biggest fear in this line of work.

Oh yeah and I almost forgot the palytoxin poisoning I've had 3 or 4 times now hasn't been great, but it's not that bad once you throw up a couple times and the headache starts to subside after 4 or 5 hours.

Also, to any of the people who mention they get itchy and bumps whenever they work in their tank in general you may have 'swimmer's itch' in your water from a contaminated snail being added. UV sterilizer has fixed that for me in a couple client accounts that had the swimmer's itch parasite present when I assumed control of the tanks. And yes, it is counterintuitive but you will get more sensitive to it over time rather than less.... don't ask me how I know lol

 

[Sir Chris]

The backs of hands are much more delicate then your calloused up fore.

Then when your in free water you absorb water inflating your skin, stretching it showing less often used surfaces.

 

[Sir Chris]

Can’t edit out

 

[Sir Chris]

****NOT PLEASANT IMAGE*****

Moving a tank I was trapped under it from a stupid friend.
It was a store style 3 stack tank with acrylic backs and glass front.
I’m lucky what happened. Being it fell on me

Split my back and front of my fingers buttcrack

 

[vlangel]

did the guy buy the eel at least? i think i'd guilt buy it at that point

Ha ha no, he was an older teenager that loved thinking about buying all the aggressive pets. He often looked at the tarantulas and some of the lizards but he did not usually buy anything. I bet he had fun telling the story of what happened though!

Anyway it was my fault for invading the eel's lair and making it feel threatened. I was not knowledgeable on that specie at the time since we generally carried snowflake eels. After that I checked to see if an eel had a round snout or a pointier snout before putting my hand in the tank, LOL.