Paly Toxins. Long diatribe by me but worth reading.

AquamanE

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This is coming from the Florida Marine Aquarium Society:

Paly toxins. Well worth my long diatribe, PLEASE READ.

I was given permission to share this by one of our very members, Robert Dickman Jr. (you all know him as Bobby, our Raffle guy for years, and now current VP).

Bobby, has been re-doing his tank in his office for the last few weeks. As he chose rocks, he found one he had sitting around in his house that had been dry for at least a year or more (dry), and thought it would be a good addition to his new aquascape. He took it and brought a wire brush to it, to clean it..

As he was cleaning it with the brush he noticed a few dozen dried stems from the paly’s on the rock, the reason he took it out. Thinking nothing of it.

As he did this he felt a cough, but no big deal. He took a break and went back at it until he felt it was clean. Within a few minutes his cough got worse, and now had chest heaviness.

On his way home he called me (Im a Registered Nurse). I told him to take Benadryl, and call me if it gets worse. He also called Julian (Sprung) who told him if he had a fever or chills to go to the ER.

A few hours later he had a fever of 101. Went to the ER and at that point it was 104 (that is one heck of a fever).

Long story short: Bobby was in the hospital for 36 hours due to this toxin. The Poison Control folks have now started an investigation into this type of poison with Bobby as their willing subject.

Public Service Announcement- Do not clean, boil, rocks that might possibly have had Paly’s on them.
 
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Reef_a_holiks

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More and more of these cases seem to be popping up. Thats pretty crazy how even a year old dried out dead palys still carried the toxin and affected him. il be following to see where this gets to, as im quite paranoid myself of working on the tank.
 
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AquamanE

AquamanE

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More and more of these cases seem to be popping up. Thats pretty crazy how even a year old dried out dead palys still carried the toxin and affected him. il be following to see where this gets to, as im quite paranoid myself of working on the tank.

Reef- I dont thing you need to be "paranoid", just be aware.

Bobby was hospitalized for ~ 36 hours and the Florida Poison Control ask permission to review his file and create a "sample". Hopefully this info gets spread so the experts have better tools to treat these kinds of thing.
 

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