Holy cow what a mess(update on they paly war)

I

installman

New member
As most of you already know I decided to remove all the blue/brown palys from my 180 a few days ago as they were taking over the tank. I made a deal to trade my live rock that was covered in them for baserock. Yesterday morning after I got the kids off to school and had breakfast I brought in a large cooler from the garage and started removing paly covered rocks from my tank. The good news was that it was relatively easy as most of the rocks they were on were easily accessible. This process took about 1 hour and I was glad to be done with it as these things have a distinct odor and they were stinking up the house. I had removed about 50% of the rock in my tank. I then went and traded the rocks and came home with a cooler full of new rock. When I got home I noticed that every zoa frag was closed, the mushrooms were shriveled up and my trumpet coral was looking really bad(shedding skin and flesh) the few acros I have were sliming pretty badly and the new sps frags I have were all stark white and looked dead. I was ****ed to say the least as all I had done was remove some rock with palys on it without really harassing any of them. At this point I decided whatever was going to die was already dead so i set up a siphon into a filter sock and vacuumed the whole tank scraping the palys off the starboard and down into the filter sock. This took a while and I went thru 3 filter socks doing it. I had carbon running in a reactor this whole time as well to help with any palytoxin that was released into the water. I began to place the new rock in the tank. I was thinking I must be coming down with a cold as I started sneezing and my throat was getting sore. My wife and oldest daughter started complaining of the same symptoms. Soon after, my wife went to pick up our other 3 children from school. By the time she got home the tank work was complete and we thought the ordeal was over. By dinner time everyone was sneezing and complaining of a sore throat and the dogs had bloodshot eyes runny noses, and were sneezing. At this point I started to think it may have been from me disturbing all those palys, but at least it was over with right? No, not yet. We all had a night of freezing, then sweating and none of the kids ended going to school today. I got up this morning to see that every sps in my tank is totally devastated, except the acros which appear to be fine. I doubt the green trumpet will even make it. I will post some pics in a little while. The good news is although I am still a little stuffy I am feeling much better. Was this airborne palytoxin? Or just a weird coincidence? I can't say for sure but my gut tells me that it was palytoxin.
 
WOW. Sorry to hear that. I would think it was Palytoxin. I have some of these "OK a lot" now I am afraid to remove them
 
shibby1 said:
Dangggggggggggggggg that's not cool man how are the mushrooms looking now??
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They are shrunk to like 1/2 size right now

sirrealism said:
WOW. Sorry to hear that. I would think it was Palytoxin. I have some of these "OK a lot" now I am afraid to remove them
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I would make sure you have really good ventilation in the house while doing it. And put any coral you want to keep in a seperate tank not sharing the same sump. I moved most of my stuff into my frag tank before i started just so I would't make accidental frags, but it shares the sump with the 180.
 
Wow that is crazy, that they can cause that. I have a few that came in on 1 rock, now I'm thinking of removing it from my tank too. And hope for the best. I do have a few windows I can open in my DT room.
 
Holy crap, sorry to hear it, that Palytoxin is no joke :(

installman said:
put any coral you want to keep in a seperate tank not sharing the same sump. I moved most of my stuff into my frag tank before i started just so I would't make accidental frags, but it shares the sump with the 180.
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This is a very good idea and thanks for sharing the information, hopefully this won't happen to anyone anymore.
 
aguila88psi said:
Holy crap, sorry to hear it, that Palytoxin is no joke :(



This is a very good idea and thanks for sharing the information, hopefully this won't happen to anyone anymore.
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I was under the impression that this stuff only goes airborne if you boil rocks or something, but I am now sitting here in my living room with the windows and doors open just to be safe.
 
While you and your family certainly could have inhaled palytoxin vapors from the palys, there are a bunch of other toxins that could have been present as well from various sources. Many algaes can cause those symptoms and to me it sounds like symptoms from a toxic algae (which could affiliated with the palys' infauna). I have experienced similar symptoms several times when exposing live rock and other surfaces that have never been exposed to air. I also wonder if you could have disturbed a sulphur dioxide pocket (if you have a sandbed). The reason I am not sure about palytoxin exposure is because of its extreme toxicity. Mild exposure could cause similar symptoms and the palytoxin threads are full of similar anecdotes, but they usually come from a paly squirting in a local area. Racing heartbeat and other neurological symptoms often accompany palytoxin exposure. I have spent years working with green and brown palys and always move them in dry coolers during tank moves without symptoms unless related to direct contact.

I recently had an epiphitic dinoflaggelate bloom (amphidinium sp) that caused me similar symptoms. It does not have the typical snotty appearance of dinos and is highly toxic to corals - in my case, SPS, coralimorphs and LPS. I also suffered temporary hearing loss during its bloom/decay. The toxin my strain produced is currently being analyzed in a lab but it is somewhat similar to palytoxin. Such organisms aren't usually harmful when healthy but they crash quickly and that's when toxicity from them is an issue. Some are quite hard to detect until they die. salinity change kills them in seconds so air exposure certainly could have a similar effect. I always experience these symptoms while fishing near a certain sandbar at Anclote as the tide recedes and you can see the red streaks in the sand there where it is growing. Amphidinium (looks like diatoms), Karenia (our local red tide) and Ostreopsis (red snot) are very different dinos that all produce similar toxins with similar symptoms.

Now that's not to say the two are unrelated. Palys and zoanthids take up different dinoflaggelates into their tissue (zooxanthellae included) and it is theorized that is the source of certain toxins produced by z's and p's, rather than something the polyps produce themselves. The z and p family contains a wide array of nasty chemicals, most of which are just generically labeled as palytoxin.

Most importantly, I'm glad you and the family are OK after exposure. If symptoms persist, please seek medical assistance. Get the house aired out and keep the rock submerged - that should reduce further exposure. Keep running fresh carbon to remove toxins and skim wet. You may even consider placing a pouch of carbon on top of the skimmer to clean the air leaving the unit of vaporized toxins. 1 gal nylon paint strainer bags with the top tied would be perfect for the job. Elevating pH will kill a dino bloom if present, but it will also help to neutralize acids and chemicals the stressed corals are excreting. Keep a close eye on pH and KH until things stabilize. You will likely need to tweak it manually.
 
I remember Randy Holmes Farley saying that palytoxin cannot in fact go airborne, even if you boil it. That said, it could have been on your skin and transferred.

It also could have been something else entirely. Glad everyone is ok though, that stuff is scary for sure.
 
Hey Installman, if you go back through some of my old threads you'll see where I tried to eradicate those palys. They are a real pain in the you know where. Please tell me the Grandis survived. I loved those guys.
 
Tampa snooker. Good post. Installmans tank is bare bottom with starboard so its not a pocket in the sand. But any of the other things you mentioned "which are way over my head" very well could be it. All in all its best to be careful when dealing with these. I Also have moved rocks with these on them several times with no water for hours "hoping they would die" with no ill affect
 
Tampa snooker
Most of what you said is beyond me, but I now undertstand it could have been something besides just the palys.
 
I thought it might be a BB tank with the starboard but some people mix. I threw out the sulphur pocket theory because of the sudden mortality. I have a friend who lost a 20+ year old BB tank due to hitting a debri pocket while scraping glass behind the rocks. But in remembering, he lost all fish in minutes then corals stressed.

To sum up my theory - some algaes and of course corals make baaaaaaad juju. It's not bad if they are happy and holding on to their juju but if they stress and/or die, they release their bad juju, raising :furious:.
 
GrouperGenius said:
Hey Installman, if you go back through some of my old threads you'll see where I tried to eradicate those palys. They are a real pain in the you know where. Please tell me the Grandis survived. I loved those guys.
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Hi Mark
The Grandis are totally unaffected. And they are doing well. I am almost afraid to go back and read your old posts now.
 
installman said:
Hi Mark
The Grandis are totally unaffected. And they are doing well. I am almost afraid to go back and read your old posts now.
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I basically tried injecting them with bleach and kalk. Didn't phase them. I had scraped PILES of those off the bottom before. Threw out rocks covered. Caught alot of flack in the zoanthid forums.

Hey Snooker, I gotta check in on you guys once in a while.
 
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