Palytoxin Thread Apology.

vetteguy53081

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I want to stress this is what we experienced and your situation maybe conpletely different. We are both doing better but still here.
They ran a bunch of blood test twice. Gave me a bag of IV and my wife Two. We both were extremely Tachycardic and had a fever when we got here. My RHR is normally very low. In fact 2 years ago I had a vasovagal episode fainted and needed staples in my head. We both had elevated White blood cells and My CKG levels were very high. according to Poison control Palytoxin typically breaks down your muscles. My wife's levels were normal however. Both of our EKGs came back normal and both of our chest x-rays were fine although we had chest tightness. covid tests came back negative. They gave us this medicine and it made a feel a million times better as per recommendation of Poison Control. Basically it is like motrin with better anti inflammatory properties. Atleast this is what I was told.
Good stuff- works on inflammation and extreme pain.
 

Timfish

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Regarding aerosolizing paly toxin I don't see how it can happen on its own just pulling a colony out of the water. Paly slime is pretty viscous. Seems to me it there has to be some outside force applied, like hot or boiling water, forced hot air, drilling or cutting with a saw.
 

rhostam

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If it hasn't been posted, here is an interesting read that summarizes studies and literature on the nebulous and controversial subject:


I see an explanation in those articles for why palytoxin poisoning isn't more common: not every zoa/paly has the poison [at all or in the amounts that would be dangerous to humans].

Unfortunately, the trade doesn't do due diligence and so "dangerous" is just the label we use for all of them. It isn't unlike the rep of a pit bull or any other "dangerous" creature.

What would the hobby look like if specimens brought in from the ocean were tested before being sold or brought into aquaculture/ mariculture farms? Perhaps that is one opportunity for premium-sales: get their colonies tested and continue to propagate the "good" ones.

Absent regulation, what we have is the next best thing: education, if available, and personal responsibility to treat these creatures with care and caution. An ounce of prevention...
 

Timfish

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. . . What would the hobby look like if specimens brought in from the ocean were tested before being sold or brought into aquaculture/ mariculture farms? Perhaps that is one opportunity for premium-sales: get their colonies tested and continue to propagate the "good" one . . .

My concern would be if palies and zoas can change how much toxin is made based on environmental conditions. There's other examples of toxins being made by an organism in response to less than favorable conditions.
 

arking_mark

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There is little to no evidence of Zoas having Palytoxin. Unfortunately, zoas are just lumped with Palys. Even in the Palys, it very rare....and why we need more pictures of confirmed cases and the offending Paly.
 

MnFish1

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Interesting.

I guess then it's a matter of when and how much of the palytoxins are released? I imagine we're all exposed to it at some point in dealing with reefs. Is it more of a quantity thing then? Or are some people's cells more immune to the binding of the toxin to the cell's pump?

What do you mean "the natural binding site" of ouabain?

Excuse me but I had to look up a few terms here. I'm just a layman :D.

Isn't ouabain itself a different toxin? Are you saying they Palytoxins and Ouabain bind in the same manner?

Edit: reading some more articles on Ouabain I guess it's something present in a lot of mammals (like us) already just in low volumes, and plays an integral part in our cardio system. So if that's right then nevermind I get it now.
I quoted an article. I cant remember from college science what ouabain is :)...
 

Courtney Aldrich

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There are several published assays for quantifying palytoxin. You might want to contact your state department of health to see if they'd be willing to test for potential palytoxin (see the following article published in the CDC weekly report: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6431a4.htm). I plan to set up assay too following this paper: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.analchem.7b01003. I have ordered an authentic standard from Japan to create a standard curve and hopefully can have an assay running in a month to screen corals for palytoxin.
 
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Regarding aerosolizing paly toxin I don't see how it can happen on its own just pulling a colony out of the water. Paly slime is pretty viscous. Seems to me it there has to be some outside force applied, like hot or boiling water, forced hot air, drilling or cutting with a saw.

You could be right but I think it can happen with a skimmer pump injecting air and high velocity water smashing the side of my sump. The fact that it was airborne in nature (italy) suggests waves crashing would cause the same effect. The top of my sump looked like a nasty hot tub with foam on top.

edited to say I can assure you there was none of those things in our case. No hot water, fragging, sawing, and I have hydronic heat. Also although I suspect it was airborne it is very possible it wasn't and our reaction was strictly from touching the palytoxin.
 
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ColdWafflez

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I just got messed up after handling my zoanthid for less than a minute outside of the water to remove it from the frag plug. I think I might have damaged a little bit of the zoanthid from prying under it to remove it from the plug tho. I was fine doing my other 4 corals that day. While placing the zoanthid in my tank, I started to feel really weird and bad so I rushed to just stick the zoanthid on the rock so I can quickly go lay in bed as I was really quickly starting to feel like crap. Basically like 5 or 10 minutes after handling my zoanthid, I went from like 0-100 with starting fever, nauseous, dizzy, weak, hold/cold chills, and a little bit of numbness throughout my body while laying in bed. It sure didn't feel good to search up how toxic zoanthids could be with no cure while I was getting the symptoms of palytoxin poisoning. I didn't end up going to the ER as I was starting to feel a little better after like 5-6 hours. I've basically been nauseous with a bad headache and puking throughout for like 30 hours now but i'm almost recovered.
 
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MnFish1

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There is little to no evidence of Zoas having Palytoxin. Unfortunately, zoas are just lumped with Palys. Even in the Palys, it very rare....and why we need more pictures of confirmed cases and the offending Paly.
This might seem to be a little misleading, because most people also call palythoa sp. 'zoas', because they are zoanthids. Palythoa are common in the aquarium trade as are non-palythoa zoanthids. Though you're right, if you took a list of 100 species of 'zoanthidae', only a very small number of them have palytoxin (at least from my reading on the subject). Having said that, it can be extremely difficult to tell some of them apart. So - IMHO, the best idea is to be careful unless one is certain, he/she does not have one of the toxic varieties.
 

arking_mark

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This might seem to be a little misleading, because most people also call palythoa sp. 'zoas', because they are zoanthids. Palythoa are common in the aquarium trade as are non-palythoa zoanthids. Though you're right, if you took a list of 100 species of 'zoanthidae', only a very small number of them have palytoxin (at least from my reading on the subject). Having said that, it can be extremely difficult to tell some of them apart. So - IMHO, the best idea is to be careful unless one is certain, he/she does not have one of the toxic varieties.

Please post pictures of the suspected Paly. It may help others.
 

MnFish1

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Please post pictures of the suspected Paly. It may help others.
But - here is an article describing the differences. My guess is that most of the 'cheap' 'Zoas' that people are keeping may be the more dangerous type. The brightly colored things that people pay 200/polyp - are not. Hope the article helps.
 

ColdWafflez

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IMG-20210524-WA0000.jpeg
This is the zoanthid that I had that poisoned me. It wasnt labelled when i picked it out. At another LFS, I saw it labelled just as "wild zoa." It was one of their uglier cheaper zoas. I guess that I got what I paid for haha
 

arking_mark

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IMG-20210524-WA0000.jpeg
This is the zoanthid that I had that poisoned me. It wasnt labelled when i picked it out. At another LFS, I saw it labelled just as "wild zoa." It was one of their uglier cheaper zoas. I guess that I got what I paid for haha

Can you take the picture with more whites? The blues kinda wash everything out without filters.
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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In Lubbock TX that wouldnt poison anyone though, its regional susceptibility

source: thirty years and thousands of pet store contacts, all lubbock reef chats, a decade and a half of home reef meetings where we frag palys on kitchen counter, this is regional. if a city of three hundred thousand can reef for three decades with no cases, its regional. when our reefers got the flu, it was treated as the flu it wasnt palytoxin. If it was, then that means palytoxin cases can be treated with tamiflu. This is a powerful powerful hype machine going on.
 

MnFish1

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In Lubbock TX that wouldnt poison anyone though, its regional susceptibility

source: thirty years and thousands of pet store contacts, all lubbock reef chats, a decade and a half of home reef meetings where we frag palys on kitchen counter, this is regional. if a city of three hundred thousand can reef for three decades with no cases, its regional. when our reefers got the flu, it was treated as the flu it wasnt palytoxin. If it was, then that means palytoxin cases can be treated with tamiflu. This is a powerful powerful hype machine going on.
So @brandon429, you would be the kind of person that would eat a handful of jelly beans out of a jar where 1 one of the jelly beans contained cyanide? I mean it Makes sense not to be rampantly paranoid, nor completely dismissive, right? I cannot see how palytoxin can 'regional' since corals are shipped from all over to all over. My guess is also that some people have very mild symptoms and never know they even had the problem.

As someone else said 'Most' of the zoanthids that we see do not contain significant amounts of palytoxin. And there are lots of other things in tanks that can contain it. I guess my philosophy is be careful with anything you're messing with in your tank. I would also say that scratching your arm on a piece of coral is more likely to kill you than a Zoa, or if you're sensitive to anemone stings, an allergic reaction to that is more common than paly poisoning (I haven't calculated the actual incidences, only that there are a lot of things that can cause health problems)
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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I simply think its overstated that's all. aware the compounds exist and I think the marine bac risk is the highest risk from handling. I dont believe the 'toxin is aerosolized from basic works like Tim said above. agreed some have been sick by it

1% of those who claimed the toxin were made sick by it. the other 99% just got through reading headlines or this thread
I think its 99% hype. we'd have seen it, we were knee deep in reefs for twenty years and I learned from folks who'd been doing it 20 before its not been seen out here, that type of of consequence or the hype part where all ailments are attributed to paly. I dont believe the man in Dallas died from it either it was a headline since he owned a reef tank and we'll never get closure on causatives. I 100% dont agree those zoanthids above poisoned anyone, it was the bad burrito. or the wal mart door handle, but it wasnt that set of zo's. those specific ones have been traded in lubbock bare handedly and then go out for burgers after thousands and thousands of times. I simply can't accept something my highly reefing city of 300K has never seen as common or likely.
 

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