Be careful dealing with zoas, and I know everyone had had several warnings

tj51

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On our web-site in Dallas we have a post about the dangers of palys (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notro ... -near-you/) .....I figured I knew that zoas and palys were dangerous so I didn't read the post; I am careful, washing my hands every time I touch a zoa, etc., my story...

OMG I feel like a real idiot. I saw this article and as a zoa keeper I knew the dangers and thought that this guy fragged/messed with some zoas/palys and accidently put his hands to his mouth. I have a rock covered with those ugly brown worthless polyps, so to save space I chunked it in the sump (with all the macro algae blocking the light and it was probably face down all the polyps were/appeared dead, it was in there for months). I needed a rock to house some new zoas and took this one from the sump, but I didn't want those brown polyps back so I put the rock in my sink, and turned on the hot water. After about 10 minutes I put it in the tank, but the rock was acting weird and some of my corals were acting distressed so I took it out, put it in a bucket and refreshed the carbon in my tank.

I started getting stopped- up but just figured something had irritated my throat and didn't think anything about it. I even went to a member's house and bought some zoas, but as one who used to have asthma it felt like an attack was on the horizon. I took some asthma meds I had from before but it didn't help. OMG then it hit and hit hard. I started throwing up, had the worse case of chills I've ever had even with my apartment being 75 degrees, and my lungs were full of stuff, I could hardly breathe. I read this post and thought oh shyt, I didn't know he got his from steam. Went to a prima care and they told me to go the the emergency room. This is now about 5 pm. I had to explain to the Dr. what had happened, he ran some tests and a few hours later started treating my symptoms as a lung infection/asthma. Bottom line is I will be on the most evil drug I know, pregnazone for a week or more (it keeps me up at night and adds a lot of water weight). I had to find a 24 hour pharmacy and get all sorts of stuff filled and buy a cool mist humifier. I'm home now and feel like a fool. I will have to pay my insurance's deductable for the year ($500), the emergency room deductable ($75), the drug store cost me $65, I can't run for a few days or longer and will have to deal with my lungs filling up with stuff all day. The good things....the nurses were not bad looking at all and one of the prescriptions is a cough medicine with codine
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Almost 5 hours in an emergency room, over $600 out the window; all because I didn't read this. PLEASE DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU, IT'S A REALITY NOT A SCARE THREAD.

Please link this up to people who keep zoas and don't think this can happen.
 
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