After cleaning out the bulbs on all my basters that I use for hand feeding coral, I got to wondering how many of you do this daily! If you haven't been doing it, simply suck up some hot water, shake, rub the bulb together between your palms, shake some more, and then dump it out and repeat until the water runs clear! You'll be amazed at the black crud that comes out of the bulb. You'll find if you've never cleaned the bulb of your baster that you'll have to repetitively do this until it's clean. You can do this 3 or more times with each bulb, and you'll still keep pulling out gobs of gunk. You'd never even know it's in there when you're feeding, until you tip your baster back once while you're feeding and you start noticing black flakes coming out along with the food you're feeding. I cleaned mine 3 days ago, and decided it was time again, and even in that short of time there was quite a bit of buildup in the bulb.
We don't often talk about keeping our tools we work with clean, and sometimes grab one that's been sitting for weeks. Imagine what you are introducing into your tank! The bacteria has to be awful! So this is just a reminder to all reefers, to have a designated jug where you can keep your tools soaking in some kind of a net soak solution. At least when you grab a tool, it will be clean. I happen to have Kent- Pro Net on hand this time, but I'm sure any good product will do the job. The little bit of the product & water on the tool is non toxic, but I'd still use caution not to get a lot of it in your tank. I hope this is a useful tip to everyone! ...Angel :angel1: