Question regarding Palytoxin

Emarley · Mar 12, 2020

Hello fellow reefers,

A little intro before I get onto my questions,
I'm currently one year into the hobby and I love it I've learnt so much this past year but I still class myself as a beginner. I've currently got two nano tanks and I'm just in the process of setting up an innovative marine peninsula 14. I've heard the horror stories regarding zoas/palys so it's a coral I've avoided, especially when I've got a four year old.
However, one coral that I really like is the rasta zoa, and I would love a colony in my new tank.
So for the past two weeks I've been reading everything I can find regarding Palytoxin, and have some questions from the wonderful people on this forum.
From what I have read it appears that Palytoxin is at more toxic levels in Palythoa toxica, and also purple death and nuclear green (these seem to be mentioned whenever a Palytoxin case is reported) because they produce more mucus??? than zoas that have no or low toxic amounts. Now I'm not saying zoas are toxin free (and some zoas could be highly toxic) I would also be safe when handling them (gloves and eye protection) plus I'm not going to be fragging them or boiling rocks that they are on!!! , so my question is, has anyone experienced Palytoxin regarding zoas???, or is it palys that are the problem??? and would you keep either with a child in the house???

Thanks in advance

Dom

IAReefer · Mar 12, 2020

I have 2 younger kids, a couple of dogs/etc. never had a problem. Have both Palys and Zoas. Sounds like you know what not to do, so you’ll be fine!

good.reef · Mar 12, 2020

My friend owns an LFS and his dad helps him out cleaning the tanks and what not. A few months ago his dad got really sick and was feeling dizzy, short of breath, and numbness and the Dr.'s couldn't figure out what was wrong. My friend mentioned to the Dr. that they deal with corals on a daily basis and sure enough he was diagnosed with palytoxin poisoning. I had only read stories up until that point but I know it's a very real thing now. I couldn't tell you exactly what species it was that poisoned him but he is old school and doesn't take any extra precautions when handling corals. Since then he's still got his hands in the tanks constantly and no change in his behaviors and he hasn't been poisoned again. I think from the abundance of caution you mentioned you would be taking, you should be pretty safe. Completely anecdotally I've heard the most highly toxic are the common green and brown pallys but that I don't have any evidence to support that.

Auquanut · Mar 12, 2020

Sounds like you've done your research. The only experience I could claim with palytoxin is a numbness in my fingers once after extended handling. Could just be my imagination. As long as you take proper precautions, I think you'll be fine. One word of caution though. Rasta's tend to spread pretty quickly under the right conditions. You might want to isolated them to a rock away from you main structure. Voice of experience.

ectoaesthetics · Mar 14, 2020

I’ve had my hands in tanks with zoas and palys for years. I am cautious when fragging them or glueing them in place. Other than that I’m not. If you are dragging them use gloves and eye protection I even use this without fail when removing them from the original frag plug. I usually put down a towel and paper towels under them so that I don’t leave the toxins on any surface. Think about it like handling any toxic chemical with kids in the house (like bleach).

Just don’t do anything super weird like boil your rocks on a your stove (has happened and vaporizes the toxins) or anything else way out in left field.

As for avoiding specific “looking” zoas to avoid the toxins -it is my humble opinion that we honestly don’t know enough to conclusively say what zoas or palys are worse than others. The research on zoa toxins is still pretty early and mostly coming from the cancer drug research world which is not using the exact species we are trading in the hobby.