When Should I do deep cleaning in my snakes cage

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Okay lets say all your points are true and undeniable what do you think of products like Repti Hand as a sanitiser?

I'm not familiar with Repti Hand, but basic critical thinking tells us that sanitisers are a common thing, they're used in homes, hospitals, laboratories, etc etc. The concept of killing germs in universal, not somehow different with reptiles. If in some magical alternate reality a herp product was better than what was being sold in supermarkets, industrial suppliers, medical suppliers, etc etc, all these places would be buying the reptile product.

Boutique markets like this work because most people don't know much, so if you slap a reptile label on a reptile (or any other specialist label on a generic product) that market will recognise that the product can be used for their hobby. Naturally this will incur all sorts of additional costs (economy of scale, rebranding, etc). The benefit for the consumer is that they are told what to do without having to do any research. Unfortunately, many groups abuse this concept and, knowing their target market is naive, they are apathetic about using quality items and just use anything which seems like a vague fit, knowing naive people will be happy to pay extra for an inferior product because if they knew what they were doing they wouldn't be buying it in the first place.

If you actually want a decent sanitation product, look at what professionals use. I used to work in a medical research laboratory, I can tell you we certainly weren't using Repti Hand, and I can tell you what we were using was much cheaper and at least as good, probably better. Best case scenario they'll have made or rebranded something equivalent to alternatives at a premium price. In the lab we exhaustively examined all available products, they had to be effective. When you're working with/experimenting on humans it's much more serious if there's cross contamination or an adverse reaction to a product, or the product doesn't work.
 
No one said it was specifically designed for reptiles. I said that it was marketed to reptile keepers, commercially pushed on them. That's not to say it's reptile keepers exclusively.

I'm not sure if it was deliberate or unintentional, but your description of chemical and mechanical cleaning is misleading. With Mr. Corona making this issue topical, it's worth knowing that washing with soap/detergent and water is more effective than F10 (or hand sanitiser) unless you're going to soak the item (or skin) for an extended period, longer than you would spend washing yoir hands or an item.

'Mechanical cleaning'/not using chemicals shouldn't be confused with using soap or detergent. These work to remove things as well as denature them. Disinfectants primarily or exclusively work by denaturing (as opposed to removing) things. For example, if you use hand sanitiser the germs are still on your hands, but they're destroyed. Washing with soap removes them from your hands so even if they are not destroyed, they are removed. F10 requires more time than people typically give it to work, making it generally useless as used by regular untrained hobbyists. Washing with soap or detergent is generally effective.

F10 may be appropriate for vets who know how to use it and have unreliable vet nurses who can follow orders but are as stupid and unreliable as typical vet nurses (let's be honest, any of us who has spent much time around vets knows exactly what I'm talking about), but especially for hobbyists, F10 is pointless and generally counterproductive due to providing a false sense of security/sanitation.

I made no reference to the use of F10 as a hand sanitiser. Your comments with regard to this are both erroneous and irrelevant.

Warm soapy water allows one to physically remove matter by washing it off. It does not denature biological pathological agents as you seem to think. While soap or detergents are chemicals, the emulsifying effects of both are physical, allowing the mixing of two otherwise immiscible substances to form a colloidal suspension. Those substances remain unchanged in their chemical structure, but can now be much more readily moved, instead of sticking.

I’ve spent my fair share of time at the vets and could not disagree more with your comments here. If they are truly representative of your own experiences, it would seem you are not discerning enough in your choice of veterinary services. Or perhaps it is just an attempt to denigrate vets in general because many use and sometimes recommend F10.

Yeah F10 is pretty stupid. If you want to disinfect properly it's garbage and if you want to clean it's garbage.

Why make such unnecessary derogatory comments about F10? If you did the research you bitch about others not having done, then you would know these statements are straight up wrong. F10 has rapid kill times – less than 30 secs for gram positive bacteria, 60 secs for gram negative bacteria, Canine Parvovirus 20 mins. In Australia, F10SC is registered by the APVMA for use in animal production and housing facilities, approved by AQIS for use in food export processing as a non-rinse disinfectant, and is also listed by the TGA as a Hospital Grade Disinfectant.

I respect your wealth of knowledge, but you are letting yourself down in this instance.
 
If you're going to get into ad hominem attacks and get emotional I'm not going to continue with you. You've misrepresented what I've said and even tried to convince me of some of the exact same points I had already made, as though I was saying the opposite.
 
My apologies if this came across as a personal attack. It was not meant to be personal or an attack but rather a counter argument. Hence the the lack of names or quotes in my first post. The personal perception no doubt emanates from the fact that I did reply in kind to a few specific comments directed at me.

Sufficient correct information has now been presented to enable informed decision making. This is all I really hoped to achieve.
 
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A number of the comments made are incorrect and very misleading for new or intending keepers reading this thread.
Thanks BlueTongue1, I don't usually chime in on these debates, but anyway, here goes.

F10 is not a skin irritant.
F10Sc contains Benzalkonium Chloride which is a quaternary amonium compound that are known to cause skin & respiratory irritation, particularly if used incorrectly. I have been an animal care worker for many years in one of the Scientific Institutes you refer to above & have witnessed this on many occasions where these chemicals are used on other species causing very nasty burns to mucus membranes when unintentionally ingested & skin burns. It also worth noting that some people are highly allergic to these chemicals. It is for this reason that our Institutional WHS Unit made us remove the non-hazardous sticker from the F10Sc spray bottle. Re msds, apologies if this is incorrect, I may have misinterpreted something But I am sure I read that it is a skin/respiratory irritant. Possibly one of the old versions.

F10 effectively destroys the vast majority of pathogens within the first minute.
Yes, I guess this is true but without knowing how resistant these (reptile/amphibian) pathogens are, you really need to leave it on for a contact time of 20 minutes. The other consideration is the risk of disease transmission. definitely very high for pet shops, veterinary hospitals, & large scale hobbyist's i.e breeders particularly if you buy & sell animals. This stuff would be ideal to use on all your quarantine caging, which I hope everyone is doing if introducing new animals to your collection.

I guess all I am saying is if you are going to use these products then use them correctly, as I have seen too many people splash this stuff around all over the place which really does not achieve much.
I would suggest using it only when you need to do a complete clean, with a 1:125 or minimum 1:250 dilution spraying all non porous surfaces and leaving for 20 minutes. You could leave it to air dry but personally I would wipe as much residue off as I could. For logs & other porous types of enrichment I just leave them in the hot sun to expose to radiant heat & UV. Water dish's, just hot water with mild dish washing liquid.

There you go, that's my two bobs worth:)
 
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Thanks for your response Dave. You make some good points. However there are some points that need addressing.

As you state, one of the two active ingredients in in F10SC is a benzalkonium chloride (BAC), a quaternary ammonium compound (QAC) Different QACs have differing properties, so it is not relevant to talk about QACs in general. What also needs to be taken into account is the concentration of this chemical in F10. A 100% concentration of BAC is skin corrosive. However, at the concentrations found in F10 it is not considered to be a skin irritant. A similar example is acetic (ethanoic) acid. At 100% concentration this acid is skin corrosive and highly damaging to mucous membranes, yet at 4 – 8% in vinegar we put it on chips which are picked up and eaten, bringing acetic acid into contact with skin and mucous membranes.

The amount of benzalkonium chloride in F10SC concentrate is 5.4%. The recommended dilution rates (and their corresponding BAC concentrations) are:
1. General disinfection at 1:500 (0.01%).
2. High level disinfection against bacteria, fungi and most viruses at 1:250 (0.02%).
3. For use against the most resistant viruses such as Parvovirus or PBFD at 1:125 (0.04%). More recent testing has shown 15 minutes exposure is effective to kill these. At these concentrations it is not considered a skin irritant.

F10SC, as I previously stated, is classified as an eye irritant. On that basis alone, and no other, the spray bottles you mention should never have been labelled non-hazardous.

What has some people being allergic got to with the discussion? I have two nieces that are allergic to peanuts to the point where ingesting even traces of them could be fatal. I think that is much more likely to qualify as “highly allergic”. Yet does that mean no-one should eat peanuts? Allergies to BAC are extremely rare and mostly result in allergic contact dermatitis, which is hardly life threatening.

This is not about promoting the use of F10, just providing correct information so people can make up their own minds.
 
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