To all concerned about Zoanthid safety.

vijaym85

vijaym85

New member
I started a thread on if Vendors should or should not warn ppl about potential risk of mishandeling a zoo polyp in the General forum on RC. I think zoos are a awesome coral and that when kept safely they can be a beautiful piece. However I think in the long term our hobby will benefit from vendors just warning ppl who appear to be a noob or unexperienced about a zoo so that we can avoid having to be in a situation where the government conideres this a dangerous toxin and regulates the hell out of it because someone who did't know about its toxins screwed up.

I DON't wan't them to stop being sold, just to be sold in a smarter way by making ppl aware of it. Its the same as saying if you were going to go paint something but were not a PRO. painter and the Paint can informs you about a particular toxic comp. that may make you sick. Yeah most of us know about the general danger of inhaling paint just like most of us know about the general danger of keeping ANY coral but to single out a particularly abundant, cheap, fragable, low maintaince coral that is a NOOB magnet seems justified. Just because your not a full-time painter dosn't mean you don't have a right to know, and thats all I am saying about keeping zoos, a simple warning and thats it. Not every person is aware of any potential risk associated with this coral as comapred to other less harmful ones.

If your into talking about it you can check out my thread.. I am not saying a vendor has to do it but taht it would be nice if they do warn us. BUt they don't have to since there is not law requiring it. Its just an opinion I respect that not everyone will agree with it!

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1065116&perpage=25&pagenumber=1
 
I honestly don't see a problem with doing that. I don't think it will happen thought because the warning sign above the zoo tank that says "WARNING, These corals contain a DEADLY toxin that if ingested could cause serious injury or death." would probaly cause a drop in sales.
 
I think something cautionary like they have for scorpion fish etc (even foxfaces) would be helpful and i don't thin it deters sales
 
Hi guys,
I don't think it will drop sales from hardcore reefers like us, as many of us know the risk and accept it and still buy them. Perhaps it will deter Noobs to wait a little longer till they know more and are fammiliar with the hobby. Sometimes its better to loose a few sales instead of getting into a problem later. If a dealer goes out of there way to warn me I will have more faith in them too and buy from them in the future.
Just my opinion.
 
Of all the fragging of zoas that has happened in the US, has anyone really ever gotten sick? I did a linear extrapolation (which I know is not actual, but I'm prety sure it's not going to be exponential) of the amount of palytoxin needed to kill a mouse and upped it to a 200 pound person and it would take 15-16 grams of straight palytoxin to kill someone. Even if it was half that, 8g of straight palytoxin is a lot of palytoxin. I've had numbness and dizziness that I attributed to palytoxin in the past (after spending several consecutive hours of fragging), but it has passed each time within an hour (more like a fun buzz than anything I was concerned about, though;)). There is no way I could have proved that it was palytoxin that caused it though and not some other nasty. I agree people should be aware that it is a toxin, but mass alerting seems alarmist...
 
So far, there are no reported human deaths from zoas. I guess people must handle them fairly well in my opinion. This labeling thing might seem like some bit of overkill, like putting calorie content on individual items at McDonalds. If you were not a moron, you would know that McNuggets are bad for you. Being a resposible reefer, one should find out facts before buying a certain coral or fish. It cannot be left up to the stores to do this, like General72 said, if they are able to police themselves then they may not choose to put up warnings due to monetary interests. Then what if the government steps in and says that all zoas must be labeled. It just seems like overkill. Let the Theory of Natual Selection take place, all dumb people are killed by zoa toxins and the smarter reefers survive amd take their coral.
 
Like I said, I agree that people should be aware of it, but if you use common sense and wash your hands after messing with them (or anything else in the tank for that matter) and don't suck the juice out of a zoa or paly, you've got little to worry about;). They were given a really bad name in other parts of the world because some idiots decided that they were overgrowing their tank, so they took a wire brush to them in the tank and the result was dead SPS... Well, if you take a wire brush to xenia overgrowing your tank (or just about anything overgrowing your tank), you should be intelligent enough to know that it is going to have detrimental effects on the inhabitants (sorry, a continued rant from a publication of some highly touted people who did stupid things and blamed zoas for resulting problems...). The guy in questions proudly takes credit for turning a whole nation/region against zoas by being an extreme and illogical alarmist. That is the scab that I pick from time to time;). I still have difficulty believing that a person as intelligent as I think the person that takes that credit to be seems to have lost all intelligent thought when it comes to scraping things out of an established tank and then blamed the animals toxin and not his own actions (being vague on purpose;)).
 
i guess we should label all coral because most are pretty darn toxic.

should we label everything you shouldnt eat? seriously.

i mean, isnt it kinda obvious some things shouldnt be eaten or licked? keep coral at your own risk, maybe thats the header for your brigade. :)
 
I don't want to come off as some annoying safety guy. Just give a little speciall attention to things that deserve it. I dont think ppl are going to start dying like crazy from this just feel its nice to know what your getting into and respect it. but hey its just an opinion and I dont think they should be forced to tell you just that it would be nice if they do, but not by force through the government
 
Not all zoanthids are toxic. In fact I've read at multiple sources in the past that most of the zoos typically found in the hobby are not toxic. And I'm thankful for that.

I was trying to frag a piece of GSP a couple of weeks ago that had a few zoos attached to it on one side. My face was almost 2 feet away from the GSPs as I was working with it and sure enough, something squirted off of the colony and got in my right eye pretty good. I rinsed my eye immediately after it happened for a while. Nothing happened at all. It didn't swell up, itch, nothing. Thankfully.

I would not encourage anybody to risk it though if you don't have to. I still treat zoos as if they were poisonous. I don't think anyone would want their pet to accidentally eat a polyp of any type. It wouldn't hurt to have some sort of disclaimer out there.
 
It isn't so much that we need to be dosed very strongly with toxins, but those of us who may be succeptible to allergies need to be especially careful.

For example, peanuts aren't very threatening. Sure, they sit there in their shells conspiring against us but its all over once we pop one in our moth and chew on peanutty pleasure- however some people are *extremely* allergic to peanuts for whatever reason and cannot even breath peanut tainted air for fear of going into shock.

Similar reactions to these toxins can occur and for some reason I recall reading that if you are susceptible to things like bee stings more than the average person you have a high chance of being allergic to palytoxins too.

In the case of allergic reactions i've heard of 2 folks dying and one here on the forums who had just zoo toxin squirt in his eye and spent a few days in the hospital for fragging without proper eyewear
 
Trottman got squirted in the eye and almost died, apparently lost his pulse 3 or 4 times and was worried about an EMT sticking a finger in his bum to check to see if he broke his spine :lol: . The guy with the avatar of peewee herman with a zoo squirting him in the eye is a co worker of his at a LFS in Saint Louis.

Ryan
 
Liike I said, people should be aware, but they should be aware of a lot of things. Who said the government would get involved and force warnings? I know they know only wasting money, but that would be a phenomenal waste of money and time, considering th eother issues they constantly waste time and money on (and those that they don't touch and likely won't that really need to be addressed). I'm just not understanding this idea of the government pushing for forced labeling when no one has ever really had a documented case of being sick from this (that could definitively be linked to palytoxin. Palytoxin is going to higher in Palythoa sp. I'd ball park an estimate that less than 15% of zoas in the trade are actually Paly's (though -yet another rough bs ballpark number- probably 85% of those called paly's are incorrectly called Paly's). Once again, Palythoa are not large polyped zoas (strictly speaking). Most people see something that is larger than what they think should be a Zoanthus, so they call it Paly... There is a way to differentiate visually in most cases (Palythoa sp. are rough and grainy, as they take these items into their coenenchyme). Size doesn't matter, really;). I've seen zoas that in most peoples tanks are smaller than eraser heads, but are larger than most typical PE types in some conditions-every zoa in a firend of mine's tank are longer stalked and have larger oral discs than some P. grandis polyps I've seen.

I can appreciate your intentions, vijaym85, but I'm just not aware of anyone actually getting sick from palytoxin in fragging or handling zoas, so I don't see it as a major concern (i'm guessing that since there wasn't some large thread about Trottman nearly dying and that since there has been so much light made of it, it is a joke). Think of how many people just on RC frag daily and have no issues. To the peanut statement, people can be highly allergic to anything, so should bread (gluten allergies) and the germ filled air we breath be labeled as potentiall deadly, too (think of people who actually have to live in a bubble)? I'm not making light of the peanut allergy becasue it is a very deadly allergy, but that's just it-there are many documented cases of this happening, where there are none that I am aware of with palytoxin from fragging/handling zoas). To me, it'd be like having big warnings on cars saying that more people die in car wrecks every year than in plane crashes, so be careful while driving (however you want to look at those stats, planes are much more safe than being on the roads, but many are scared to death of flying because what if it crashes)... JMO;). I'm not meaning to be abrasive here, but it seems like a real non issue to me, compared to the other things out there that will get you without warning and are documented. I played with button polyps (which are a Palythoa sp., or the ones I'm talking about, anyway-some PE's are sold as buttons, too, so common names can be misleading) in my early days of reefing a number of years ago and had no idea they were posionous. I know others may have a reaction, but as far as I know, there is no way to test for it and are no real documented cases. At least there is a discussion about it, though. Even though we are debating, further awareness is being raised, so in essence, we are giving a warning to the people who peruse the zoa forum on RC:). Once again, JMO...
 
Well here's some quick info about palytoxin itself http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palytoxin (as with everything on the intraweb take it with a grain of salt, though when it comes to factoids wiki isn't that bad of a source)

Here's an RC thread about them
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=158663

a nanoreef one I found that references the above RC one
http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=93370

If you read up a little on palytoxins and hawaii you'll find articles like this http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bemorton/Neuroscience/Neurochemistry/Legend.html and more that discuss that early people in hawaii used the toxin to coat their spearheads to effectively spear prey

Oh and here's another RC thread I dug up just for kicks
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=158730

There's a lot of stuff out there- I think just a word of caution is important.



Here's an important what-if : What if you just came home from the store with some new frags and you have a what, 6 or 7 year old (that age where they aren't baby proofed anymore but you still gotta watch em)

Kid comes down says ohhh whats this? puts it in his mouth.. blammo. - Same for any dog\cat\etc - if its in the water as well it could be enough to make you sick

The guy getting shot in the eye? Rare but it happened nad could happen again> I wear my glasses when fragging now and make sure my mouth isn't gaping open in a look of stern concentration
 
That link for the palytoxin is great, especially for anyone who has taken any sort of college level biology, you can see how damaging the stuff is.
However, there is enough holding of hands going on. As, gflat65 stated, just about everything is dangerous, but that is life. We can't go around afraid of everything. It is something called life.
Also, for all bubble boys, "it is moops, not moors"
 
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