Marine aquarium cautions

[whatcaneyedo]

Originally Posted by daniella3d

I remember reading that and I think it was some sort of brownish palythoas and the dog drank the water the polyps were fragged in, so it was probably a variety of palythoas that contained the toxine and there was probably a large amount of it. Is that true? not sure as a lot of things we read are just made up.

But zoanthids have never been proven to actualy contain the palytoxine. Palythoas maybe yes, but not the 3 varieties of zoanthids (even what we call paly are still zoanthids) that we use in aquarium.

Of course if you start eating your coral, you might get very sick from most of them. I never ever read or heard anytyhing about people getting sick from toutching zoanthids with their bare hands and I never felt anything from toutching and fragging them with my bare hands, even with cuts and wounds and scratches on my hands. I even once scratched my finger badly while removing zoanthids from totoka liverock and only after one hour of fragging I realized that I was bleeding from that scratch yet no metallic taste in my mouth, no dizinnes, no nosea etc..

I am not saying it cannot happen but we should not be histerical either.

Being cautious around what we do not fully understand is not what I would consider hysteria. How many people in this hobby do you figure can accurately identify what is a zoanthus and what is a palythora? The vast majority of people that I've encountered just call everything zoos. Anthony Calfo poisoned himself on more than one occasion after handling some kind of zoanthidea and then directly or indirectly touching his mouth.

[daniella3d]

Yes well, that's common sense to wash your hands before you put them in your mouth after handling any coral, not just zoanthids. This can still happen if one is not carefull and toutch the gloves he or she used and then put the hands in the mouth.

I am not saying it's not dangerous but it's not very dangerous and very low risk. You will not die from just plainly handling zoanthids or other coral but you might if you eat it or drink the water from fragging, so keep your children AWAY from this when you frag but I will not put gloves.

There are some much more dangerous things in our aquarium than zoanthids, like the vibrio bacteria, the fish tuberculose and many other bacterias that could be potentially harmfull, yet those occurences are extremely rare.

Originally Posted by whatcaneyedo

Being cautious around what we do not fully understand is not what I would consider hysteria. How many people in this hobby do you figure can accurately identify what is a zoanthus and what is a palythora? The vast majority of people that I've encountered just call everything zoos. Anthony Calfo poisoned himself on more than one occasion after handling some kind of zoanthidea and then directly or indirectly touching his mouth.

[Bloodasp]

I wanted to cut my finger when I got stung by my lionfish. Soaked it in water which was as hot as I can tolerate for 2 hours. My finger is still bulging where I was stung and that was 3 months ago, and still tends to hurt from time to time.

[bignose]

I don't know much about lion fish, did you brush you hand past the fish or did the fish sting you?

[MCC]

I once graced my hand across an Elegance coral...it touched my wrist. At first it felt nothing. Then my wrist started to hurt like it was cut and salt water touched it. So i took my arm out and washed my hands/arms like i normally do. After a short while i noticed this long cut along the wrist. It wasn't like deep enough for blood, but it gave me a scar for at least a year after. I think the scarring finally went away as the skin renew itself.

[Goatman]

Not really an aquarium, but I got hit By a blue bottle in Australia....that was painful...very painful...

[Bloodasp]

My fault entirely. That lionfish is very timid, gets excited during feeding time but when it sees me reaching into the tank it avoids the side where I am working. During that time I didn't look into the tank to see where it was before I reached in.

[fishytime]

another close call from palytoxin exposure....heed the warnings people!

http://reeftools.com/live/forum/showthread.php?t=1593

[mandyplo]

Wow so glad I read this. Just ordered a bunch of zoas and I probably wouldn't have worn gloves until I saw this thread. Thanks guys for saving my butt once more

[fishytime]

and more palytoxin experiences http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=88064