Marine aquarium cautions

[lobsterboy]

great thread Doug

[workn2hard2day]

Yeah, I know wear gloves. It was on the underside of a rock I picked up.

[Whiskey]

Awesome thread. I thought I'd add this bit of scientific information:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XARb8Cmkac


Cheers

[navbc]

Thanks for the great info I will differently get some gloves

[monocus]

try the gorilla gloves.you can get them thicker than most nitrile gloves

[clermont]

Not an animal living in our tanks but watch out for electricity....Got a pretty good scare the other day when I stuck my hand in the tank and I could feel it. Not a strong shock more like an irritant and then the breaker blew in the house. Looked in my sump after and a heater was filled with water so it must have failed because I had vinegar bathed my return pump and was moving rock around in the sump and must have damaged it. Thinking I will get a volt meter to test water prior to sticking my hands in the tank going forward.
A GFI (believe that's what there called) would be very beneficial to every reef keeper as well.
Maybe its common sense that electricity and water don't mix but its something I stopped thinking about after the couple years I have been in the hobby.

[daniella3d]

In the Coral magasine, they mention that to this date there has not been any palytoxin found in zoanthids. So far there is no proof that zoanthids or even what we have in our aquarium that we call paly actualy have the toxine.

I frag my zoa and paly all the time without glove, even have scratches and wounds sometime and I never been sick from a bit of zoa mucus. Wearing eye glasses is important though because they can spit in the eyes and I read that this is not pleasant...although not deadly!

Originally Posted by fishytime

Working at a lfs I am amazed at how many people are surprised to learn about some of the things that could make you at the very least sick (and worse) that we keep in our little eco-systems. Im hoping perhaps this thread could become a sticky and be used as a guide for new (and possibly old) hobbyists. People need to be aware of some of the hazards the we commonly keep.

I thought maybe other canreefers could add to the thread if they had a picture of the fish,invert, etc and provide a link to the pertinent information. In thinking about the list of potential "baddies", I realized I have only one thing in my tank at the moment that could "get" me. Not really comforting considering the one thing I have is probably the only thing that could potentially prove to be fatal.

Zoanthids.

A coral touted as being a good choice for beginners and both easy to keep and frag. While all this is true zoanthids contain a deadly substance called palytoxin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palytoxin. Extreme caution should be used when handling your zoas.

-wear gloves
-if you cant wear gloves wash your hands thoroughly after
-do not handle your zoas without gloves if you have an open cut on your hands.
-while fragging your zoas, wear eye protection.

[whatcaneyedo]

Originally Posted by daniella3d

In the Coral magasine, they mention that to this date there has not been any palytoxin found in zoanthids. So far there is no proof that zoanthids or even what we have in our aquarium that we call paly actualy have the toxine.

I frag my zoa and paly all the time without glove, even have scratches and wounds sometime and I never been sick from a bit of zoa mucus. Wearing eye glasses is important though because they can spit in the eyes and I read that this is not pleasant...although not deadly!

About 2 years ago I read a report on RC where a guy's dog ate some zoanthus/palythora out of a bucket while he was doing some tank maintenance then died. Maybe later when I have a little more time I can do some searching and find it again. He obviously wasn't a scientist doing research so it wasn't properly documented. But that was proof enough for me.

[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.

Originally Posted by whatcaneyedo

About 2 years ago I read a report on RC where a guy's dog ate some zoanthus/palythora out of a bucket while he was doing some tank maintenance then died. Maybe later when I have a little more time I can do some searching and find it again. He obviously wasn't a scientist doing research so it wasn't properly documented. But that was proof enough for me.

[JonT]

I can add to the Bristle worm photo's.

Found the worm in my bucket of rock while moving the tank to the new place.... Had to wait 20 minutes for a friend to bring me Duct tape (best way to remove the bristles)





And the cause of the problem, tank is 18" wide, and it hasn't stretched out yet in this picture.