Hey guys, just curious to see how everyone cleans/sanitizes their feeding tongs that they use for their collection. Currently I wash them down with Dawn dish soap and spray them with Chlorhexadine. Recently bought 12% hydrogen peroxide and plan on using that to sanitize water dishes/feeding utensils every so often. Will start boiling the tongs as well. Bought a few more sets of tongs to use for a group of animals too that will be color coded. So what do you guys use?
Curious to see if anyone is as anal as this or not aha.
Edit: After speaking to some friends, it is indeed true that I am overly anal (surprise surprise) as it seems typically just washing/scrubbing with soap and spraying with listerine after seems to be the most common ways to clean them.
I am going to be honest, I haven’t ever cleaned my tongs before. I don’t even have chlorhexadine. I really believe that a lot of cleaning is way over complicated. Unless you have some issues that require serious disinfectant then dawn dish soap will work perfectly for most everything.
Appreciate the reply! Mine is definitely over the top, mix of working in the past with amphibian diseases and currently working in biopharm makes me a bit paranoid although I have no reason to be. Should probably tone it down a bit aha
I forgot to mention that a lot of my animals are amphibians and fish so I really worry about chemicals staying on and potentially causing something to happen to my animals. I just feel dawn is a safe, no worry compromise. I definitely think that over the top dissatisfaction is not a bad thing and definitely is a good way to prevent issues with reptiles
I have a very small collection so I just have a set of tongs per animal (2), but I think if I had more my main concerns would be: 1) seperate tongs for quarentining/new animals, and 2) seperate tongs for food types (F/T rodents v insects, etc)
I just make sure they’re surface clean, scrubbed a bit, and then washed with Chlorhex or even dawn dish soap is enough sometimes. Chlorhexidine is supposed to be safe to use around animals if rinsed off properly.
I just have 1 separate set of tongs for my quarantine snakes and 1 for my snake room snakes (who have already done quarantine and now in my snake room). I wash after each feeding separately with Dawn.