# Palytoxin alert in zoanthid corals!



## characinfan (Dec 24, 2008)

Entire family sickened by zoanthid coral toxins in the air


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## sswm (Sep 15, 2007)

Found this a good read about the subject.

https://reefs.com/2015/09/14/the-dangers-and-myths-of-zoa-toxicity-part-1/


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## characinfan (Dec 24, 2008)

Thanks, sswm. That's a useful article.

I like the annotated phylogram!


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## solarz (Aug 31, 2010)

Wonder how they actually got into contact with the toxin?

Did he try to scrub the zoas in hot water?


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## loonie (Mar 29, 2008)

I cannot say for sure 100percent it happen to me for the same reason. But what happen to me is also after I scrub of the brown/green zoa coral that has grown all over the tank including the walls of the tank. After cleaning, a hour later I fall sick. I had symptoms of vomiting, shivering, feeling cold, had asthma like breathing problem. I was admitted into hospital the next day and was feeling real bad. I was in the hospital for four days. The doctors feared I will be having a heart attack. After a lot of blood test, xrays, scan, they confirm its acute influenza virus A. It was a friend of mine who question me what I did and told me its toxin from these corals because I scrub them up. This happen last March and it took six weeks for me to recover. I am just sharing my experience but I cannot confirm its because of what I did to the coral, but I can only guess. I dare not even share this with my spouse otherwise all my SW tanks will be gone. My spouse feared that I will be gone because I was really badly sick.


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## characinfan (Dec 24, 2008)

Wow, loonie, I'm sorry that happened to you!


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## kafes (Jan 15, 2015)

well after watching this news last night on CBC , my dream of having SW tank is vanished by my wife forever... i told her most likely this guy didnt know what he was doing , but nope she said never SW tank coming to this house ...


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## Kooka (Feb 8, 2011)

A similar thing happened to an English family recently http://www.foxnews.com/health/2018/04/05/man-warns-pet-owners-after-fish-tank-releases-second-deadliest-poison-hospitalizes-10.html

It would appear to me these people have no idea what they are doing... Either they're scrubbing palys right off their rocks and spreading the contaminated juices all over the place for their families to touch or they're being sickned by something completely different. Either way, people need to take the proper precautions when working in their tanks and not just because of potential palytoxin poisoning. Other corals like leathers and xenia can also be toxic.


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## kafes (Jan 15, 2015)

the guy in the video says most likely it happend because of his own negligence. i dont even like putting my bare hands into my freshwater tanks ...i bought a long gloves from big als for maintenance after i watched some videos about danger of aquariums in ur house ... i have a marine biologist friend and he says never handle any corals without gloves ...


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## loonie (Mar 29, 2008)

characinfan said:


> Wow, loonie, I'm sorry that happened to you!


Thank you. I been keeping fish, both SW and FW for 40years, this is my first experience. But nothing happen to my wife, I am the only one affected. As I said, am not 100percent sure of the cause.


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## solarz (Aug 31, 2010)

loonie said:


> Thank you. I been keeping fish, both SW and FW for 40years, this is my first experience. But nothing happen to my wife, I am the only one affected. As I said, am not 100percent sure of the cause.


I think if the doctors did all those tests and concluded that it's a virus, it most likely is a virus.


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## characinfan (Dec 24, 2008)

solarz said:


> I think if the doctors did all those tests and concluded that it's a virus, it most likely is a virus.


The tests typically used in hospitals for the flu are either antigen-based or DNA-based, and influenza A is a reportable disease in Canada, so I'd agree with this, but that doesn't mean that he wasn't also poisoned or at risk of being poisoned.


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## Moh (Apr 3, 2017)

Once I was breaking a rock with Zoas on it and got squirted in one eye. Well next morning I was in the emergency room with the eye swollen shut and blood red... the doc could not understand it... I told him about zoas and their toxins... I think he was thinking I was nuts... so they flushed my eye give me drops and sent me away... well it started getting better after a few days.. and since I never owned not even one polyp of Zoa and I will never again.so yea we keep things in our reef tanks that could be very dangerous


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## kafes (Jan 15, 2015)

https://www.advancedaquarist.com/bl...-poisoning-almost-killed-myself-wife-and-dogs

another story , he boiled the live rock with zoas on it and almost killed everybody in the house ...


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## Torx (Jun 16, 2013)

kafes said:


> well after watching this news last night on CBC , my dream of having SW tank is vanished by my wife forever... i told her most likely this guy didnt know what he was doing , but nope she said never SW tank coming to this house ...


Let your wife know there are only about 10 calls a month in all of North America about palytoxin while there are over 1000 a month on laundry pod ingestion. There also isn't a documented case of someone who has died from palytoxin from a home aquarium. The only deaths have been where people injested fresh fish that had fed recently on algae containing palytoxin.

Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk


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## Torx (Jun 16, 2013)

solarz said:


> I think if the doctors did all those tests and concluded that it's a virus, it most likely is a virus.


Especially as there is no test for play toxin. If they found anything, it isn't palytoxin.

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## loonie (Mar 29, 2008)

I want to thank everyone for sharing their experience and opinion. I respect everyone's point of view. All I can say, we just have to be careful when handling corals.

Maybe we have to open our windows and doors, let the air circulate when we are playing around with our tanks which is what I do now.


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## CoralConnoisseur (Mar 5, 2014)

I think being careful is the key to this. People either don't know about the poison, or just don't take it seriously. If it were actually as dangerous as some of these news stories make it out to be, frags wouldn't be as readily available.

Think of Alex at Fragcave when it was still around, and March at frag box. During busy months I wouldn't doubt that these guys would be cutting hundreds if not thousands of 1 or 2 polyp zoa/paly frags. If it were really that deadly, how are they still alive?

Always be careful cutting zoas, gloves and eye protection are mandatory.


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