the worlds 2nd deadliest poison right in your tank!!

Doing a little bit of research on zoas I came across this artical. You may want to think about using caution while fragging your zoas and palys.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/04/05/world%E2%80%99s-2nd-deadliest-poison-in-an-aquarium-store-near-you/

I also came across the legend behind the toxin, i thought it was worth sharing.

Ancient Legend:
Again nighttime wails of anguish pierced the air above a small Hawaiian fishing village on the island of Maui near the harbor of Hana. That evening, when all the outrigger canoes had returned from the sea with the day's catch, yet another fishermen was missing. Desparately seeking answers, the villiagers placed the blame on the hump-backed loner living in the cliff above.
Swarming up the ridge and ripping the tapa cloak from his back, they uncovered gaping rows of triangular teeth within a huge mouth. They had caught a Shark God, one with an insatiable lust for human flesh. Their suspicions were correct. Each day after the canoes went out fishing, the hunchback had leasurely come past the villiage and gone swimming for his breakfast.
The enraged fishermen mercilessly ripped the hunchback to pieces and burned him completely. His ashes were thrown into a nearby tide pool. But, the continuing malevolence of the demon slowly transformed the pond into a pool of death. Ugly little brown anemones began to cloak its walls. Much later, it was found that these "limu", when smeared on the tip of a daggar or spear, would perpetuate the evil of the Shark God by bringing sure death to the victim. Thus, the stationary little animals in the tide pool came to be known as the "Limu Make O Hana" (Seaweed of Death from Hana).
 
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. My story......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). 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 [smilie=wink.gif] 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.

Tj
 
feel like crap today, my lungs feel like a mac truck ran over me, I still have chills and a lot of crap in my lungs. If I didn't have to go do some shopping it'd be a stay in bed all day kind of day, but thanks for the "glad I'm ok comment!"
 
Sorry to hear about it, Hope you feel better, I have been carless handling corals in my tank but after reading this article i will take precaution. Going to buy buy some gloves and a face guard or safety glasses.
 
wow, that's scary to say the least. No coughing blood for me, but as this guy did, I did take an article to the ER as I felt it would be hard to explain exactly what I had done. I felt kind of "safe" in reading just how toxic this is and I was still hanging in after 5 hours, I felt that it was just the fumes and not the actual toxins in my blood system (but of course the Dr had to check that but I guess there was a remote chance that some might have gotten into my blood stream).
 
The bad part about palytoxins are that even at miniscule doses, the body will retain them in your fatty tissues and through repetitive mishandling the levels of the toxin in your body will eventually reach lethal levels. At my body weight it would take 30 micrograms to kill me, that isnt very much.
What I ment TJ is that,im glad it wasnt worse than it was. hope you get to feeling better buddy.
 
yea, doing ok, thanks for asking, it's interesting how you don't hear about these things to often and all of a sudden there are many posts that start popping up. Matt's was scary for sure and I'm on another forum and they are talking about a member that went blind. I did come out ok, but I could have bought a lot of nice zoas for the money this is costing me lol
 
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