So good to know I don’t have to change the substrate every 4 weeks or so, cause the “Australian desert sand” type of thing is quite expensive (and heavy 😅)!!
I'm a little concerned about using F10 to disinfect organic materials, like tree barks. The large surface area (considering the porousness of wood) and the surface property means it will lower the effective concentration of (free) F10. If I remember it correctly, there are study that shows the effective concentration of F10 on cotton is reduced to only 20%. This can be managed by increasing the concentration by an order of magnitude, like you said. But then it will be very difficult to wash it off the wood (also considering the porousness). I don't feel comfortable having a piece of wood slowly oozing high-concentration F10 under IRA heating while the animal is sitting on it. The method I prefer for wood is to boil it in water, or bake it with high humidity in the oven.
I have a lot of natural rocks in my leopard gecko’s enclosure, would those be considered porous enough to where disinfectant doesn’t work that well? They’re not porous like lava rock, but they’re still not polished.
@@ReptilesandResearch As the active ingredients of F10 are either high molecular weight polymers, or ions, they are completely non-volatile. Drying it out will have no effect on reducing the amount of disinfectant on the wood. Evaporating the solvent before soaking it all out will probably make it even harder to remove due to dissolution kinetics.
@@yuanheli307 How about a 70% ethyl alcohol solution then? I’ve heard it evaporates and there’s no need for rinsing. I’ve also seen that it deals with a certain snake fungal disease just as good as a bleach solution in a study named “Evaluation of Common Disinfectants Effective against Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola, the Causative Agent of Snake Fungal Disease”.
I’ve come to the belief that disinfectants like F10 should be treated like antibiotics. You don’t take antibiotics unless you’re actually sick with something and you don’t use disinfectants unless the reptile is sick, you’re bringing in used supplies, or you have acquired a new reptile that needs to be quarantined. Use antibiotics when it’s not necessary then you increase the chances of a super bug, and use disinfectant when there’s nothing really to disinfect you increase the chances of anti microbial resistance that could potentially render things like f10 useless.
Your analogy breaks down on several levels. Antibiotics need to balance efficacy against bacteria with toxicity to the host. Disinfectants, however, usually do not face this challenge. The concentration of disinfectants used for cleaning surfaces can be much higher because they are typically wiped or rinsed away after they have done their job. Modern antibiotics bind to very specific pockets in important bacterial proteins. This specificity has the benefit of a low IC50, meaning only a small dose is necessary, and a high selectivity index (SI), which ensures that the antibiotic does not poison the host before killing the bacteria. However, this leaves the possibility for the bacteria to develop antibiotic resistance by mutating only a few amino acids in the binding protein, that's enough to alter the shape of the binding pocket. Disinfectants, on the other hand, target much broader mechanisms. For example, surfactants, one of the active ingredients in F10, break down the bilipid layer. It's next to impossible for bacteria to develop resistance to such broad mechanisms with just a few mutations. Developing an entirely new mechanism for forming cell membranes would be required. (There is the issue of biofilms, but this comment is already too long to discuss that.) Similarly, you cannot culture a (highly) heat-resistant bacterial strain by simply raising the temperature slowly. Heat affects all chemical processes in bacteria, and such resistance would take a very very long time to evolve-on the order of tens of millions of years, as seen when heat-resistant bacteria around deep-sea hydrothermal vents diverge from others. There are many published discussion of this issue, for example, Gerba (2015) commented "While it is often implied that their continued use will result in the development of resistance, this is not the case. The nonspecific action of QACs makes the development of resistance unlikely (22), and several recent reviews support this conclusion (20, 23-25)."
@@yuanheli307 Thanks for the information. So can I stick to simply cleaning the cage and accessories with a surfactant like dish soap about once a week unless my reptile gets sick with anything or do you think a disinfectant should be used at least every 1-3 months?
@@gryllidaeperkcal1369 Set aside the physical effect (rubbing stuff off the surface) surfactants in dish soap are chemically weak disinfectants, so the residual pathogen load would be higher than using a proper disinfectant, and the type of pathogen it can remove are also limited, comparing to QACs like F10. This is especially problematic if there are areas you cannot physically rub, like corners or uneven surfaces. However, I don't know what's the clinical difference between "somewhat clean" and "almost sterile". I study chemistry / chemical biology, not veterinary medicine. But frankly, I doubt there are clinical data on this matter to make it more than educated guesses. It's reasonable to suggest something like "Dish soup when health / F10 when injured or after surgery". But "dish soup when health / F10 when sick or infected" sounds a little odd. When it's infected, the biggest source of pathogen is the animal itself, not the environment (that's unless you don't care about the animal itself, but consider other animals in the same setup).
@@yuanheli307 I guess by “sick” I mean if there’s actually any disease that’s identified in the environment or a situation where a pathogen is more likely to infect a healthy reptile? For example if I were to get a new animal, perhaps it’s a rescue from a bad situation, so in that case I would want to use a disinfectant to kill any potential pathogens that aren’t known about until the 30-90 days of quarantine are over and no particular sickness is found in veterinary appointments during that time. I always try to scrub and rinse soap when using it to clean. If I’m not mistaken, soap doesn’t kill bacteria through contact like sanitizers or disinfectants, it just makes it easier for the bacteria to be physically removed with wiping and rinsing. I don’t think anyone is aiming for sterile conditions for reptiles, that’s especially not possible with bioactive enclosures. I guess we’re just going for “somewhat clean”.
F10 Veterinary Disinfectant Here: amzn.to/46GFJGD
You’d be surprised how many people don’t keep their enclosures clean and then wonder why their reptiles stay sick. Great video!
Very true!
Cools thank you
I'm stoked. I will show my kids your videos also because we are getting a bearded dragon pretty soon. Thank you for the work you put in!!
So good to know I don’t have to change the substrate every 4 weeks or so, cause the “Australian desert sand” type of thing is quite expensive (and heavy 😅)!!
I'm a little concerned about using F10 to disinfect organic materials, like tree barks. The large surface area (considering the porousness of wood) and the surface property means it will lower the effective concentration of (free) F10. If I remember it correctly, there are study that shows the effective concentration of F10 on cotton is reduced to only 20%.
This can be managed by increasing the concentration by an order of magnitude, like you said. But then it will be very difficult to wash it off the wood (also considering the porousness). I don't feel comfortable having a piece of wood slowly oozing high-concentration F10 under IRA heating while the animal is sitting on it.
The method I prefer for wood is to boil it in water, or bake it with high humidity in the oven.
@@yuanheli307 just don’t put it back in wet, let it fully dry
I have a lot of natural rocks in my leopard gecko’s enclosure, would those be considered porous enough to where disinfectant doesn’t work that well? They’re not porous like lava rock, but they’re still not polished.
@@ReptilesandResearch As the active ingredients of F10 are either high molecular weight polymers, or ions, they are completely non-volatile. Drying it out will have no effect on reducing the amount of disinfectant on the wood. Evaporating the solvent before soaking it all out will probably make it even harder to remove due to dissolution kinetics.
@@yuanheli307 How about a 70% ethyl alcohol solution then? I’ve heard it evaporates and there’s no need for rinsing. I’ve also seen that it deals with a certain snake fungal disease just as good as a bleach solution in a study named “Evaluation of Common Disinfectants Effective against Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola, the Causative Agent of Snake Fungal Disease”.
@@yuanheli307 you clearly know more about disinfectant than me, when they claim no harmful effect upon animals, is that misleading?
Thank you for reminding me to clean the tiny poops from my Leo tank
Can you reuse drift wood from 1 tank to another? If so, what is proper sanitizing method?
Another awesome video!
Thanks again!
I’ve come to the belief that disinfectants like F10 should be treated like antibiotics. You don’t take antibiotics unless you’re actually sick with something and you don’t use disinfectants unless the reptile is sick, you’re bringing in used supplies, or you have acquired a new reptile that needs to be quarantined.
Use antibiotics when it’s not necessary then you increase the chances of a super bug, and use disinfectant when there’s nothing really to disinfect you increase the chances of anti microbial resistance that could potentially render things like f10 useless.
Your analogy breaks down on several levels. Antibiotics need to balance efficacy against bacteria with toxicity to the host. Disinfectants, however, usually do not face this challenge. The concentration of disinfectants used for cleaning surfaces can be much higher because they are typically wiped or rinsed away after they have done their job.
Modern antibiotics bind to very specific pockets in important bacterial proteins. This specificity has the benefit of a low IC50, meaning only a small dose is necessary, and a high selectivity index (SI), which ensures that the antibiotic does not poison the host before killing the bacteria. However, this leaves the possibility for the bacteria to develop antibiotic resistance by mutating only a few amino acids in the binding protein, that's enough to alter the shape of the binding pocket.
Disinfectants, on the other hand, target much broader mechanisms. For example, surfactants, one of the active ingredients in F10, break down the bilipid layer. It's next to impossible for bacteria to develop resistance to such broad mechanisms with just a few mutations. Developing an entirely new mechanism for forming cell membranes would be required. (There is the issue of biofilms, but this comment is already too long to discuss that.)
Similarly, you cannot culture a (highly) heat-resistant bacterial strain by simply raising the temperature slowly. Heat affects all chemical processes in bacteria, and such resistance would take a very very long time to evolve-on the order of tens of millions of years, as seen when heat-resistant bacteria around deep-sea hydrothermal vents diverge from others.
There are many published discussion of this issue, for example, Gerba (2015) commented "While it is often implied that their continued use will result in the development of resistance, this is not the case. The nonspecific action of QACs makes the development of resistance unlikely (22), and several recent reviews support this conclusion (20, 23-25)."
@@yuanheli307 Thanks for the information. So can I stick to simply cleaning the cage and accessories with a surfactant like dish soap about once a week unless my reptile gets sick with anything or do you think a disinfectant should be used at least every 1-3 months?
@@gryllidaeperkcal1369 Set aside the physical effect (rubbing stuff off the surface) surfactants in dish soap are chemically weak disinfectants, so the residual pathogen load would be higher than using a proper disinfectant, and the type of pathogen it can remove are also limited, comparing to QACs like F10. This is especially problematic if there are areas you cannot physically rub, like corners or uneven surfaces.
However, I don't know what's the clinical difference between "somewhat clean" and "almost sterile". I study chemistry / chemical biology, not veterinary medicine. But frankly, I doubt there are clinical data on this matter to make it more than educated guesses.
It's reasonable to suggest something like "Dish soup when health / F10 when injured or after surgery". But "dish soup when health / F10 when sick or infected" sounds a little odd. When it's infected, the biggest source of pathogen is the animal itself, not the environment (that's unless you don't care about the animal itself, but consider other animals in the same setup).
@@yuanheli307 I guess by “sick” I mean if there’s actually any disease that’s identified in the environment or a situation where a pathogen is more likely to infect a healthy reptile? For example if I were to get a new animal, perhaps it’s a rescue from a bad situation, so in that case I would want to use a disinfectant to kill any potential pathogens that aren’t known about until the 30-90 days of quarantine are over and no particular sickness is found in veterinary appointments during that time.
I always try to scrub and rinse soap when using it to clean. If I’m not mistaken, soap doesn’t kill bacteria through contact like sanitizers or disinfectants, it just makes it easier for the bacteria to be physically removed with wiping and rinsing. I don’t think anyone is aiming for sterile conditions for reptiles, that’s especially not possible with bioactive enclosures. I guess we’re just going for “somewhat clean”.
bruh lizards poop bigger than cats wtf
When using F10 do you take the sand out when using it?
Take the substrate out then spray the f10
if youre doing a full clean, remove substrate fully, spray and wipe down the tank, put new sub in