soooooo
heres bobs take.
initially when i learned about the dangers of paly toxins, this guy had posted a thread on RC.
he was moving his tank, and had all of his zoo colonies in 1 big 50 gal rubbermaid container.
during the move, naturally some of the colonies had ripped and been irritated.
his dog drank GALLONS of water from that rubbermaid, and perrished w/in 24 hours.
soooooo i freaked, i have 2 cats, and got on google. what I found were just a bunch of mixed opinions.
until, another dude on RC was fraggin his zoos, and got a squirt of zoo goo directly in they eye.
his eye swole up, and he went to the er. he was convinced that he was poisonrd.
but the docs gave him meds for his eye and for an alergic reaction.
this thread went nutz. a lot of opinions again, back and forth between poisining and allergic reactions.
then a doctor got on the thread and really laid it down.
he said that the sand particles in the zoo itself had ALSO been squirted into his eye. this scratched the surface of his eyball, irritated it, and he had an allegic reaction. the good doc also made a point to point out that there is no way to definitaly attribut the reaction to palytoxins, and not some other irritant present in his tank water.
he also said that Palytoxins were intially discovered and studied by the american army to be used as a weaponized poison. turns out, paly toxins are like, uber deadly, BUT...
getting zoo goo on yor hads aint gonna kill you.
you literally need to like cut youself wide open, and introduce a few drops of the zoo goo directly into your blood stream.
or if you were to injest like 5 or 6 zoos directly you could mos def perish.
then yesterday, my friend royalscott on RS was fragging here zoos in her tank, gloveless.
her cleaner shrimp managed to open a scab on her arm. she started tearing and accidently smashed a zoo before she realized that she had an open wound on her arm, in her tank.
she immediatly felt light headed, short of breath, and her heart rate sky rocketed.
she had to go to the ER las night, and this was her "im okay post this mornin.
I got home from the ER around 9:30pm last night.
My BP finally stabilized as well as my heart rate several hours later. In the ER I called the local reef store and she said when I pushed on the zoa polyp, I pissed it off and that minute amount of toxin it put off mixed in the tank water got into the cut the cleaner shrimp gave me. Allergic reaction?
One thing I learned from all this, know what is in your tank and know what it can do to you. Also, take the info to the Er with you & tell them what they should do. Drs. do not know crap about saltwater inhabitants & will talk down to you about palytoxins. I was told that no store would sell me something this toxic!!!
Talk about a scary wake up call! Going to get GLOVES today!!!
again, the reaction wasnt directly attributed to the paly toxins, but more towards said individuals allergic reaction to a minor amount of the toxins.
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
i dont always wear gloves when im in my tank
BUT, because it will be a cold day in hell that i dont have some sort of "flesh wound on my hands or arms, if i have to touch let alone frag or move zoos, the gloves go on.
i am also very very careful with the water i remove from my tank during WC's. (i love my cats)
im sure that i have been exposed to paly toxins (i do have a reef tank) but it has not entered my body.
a lil bit will make you feel like crap. a lot can absolutly kill you.
so id say wear gloves if you have to handle them. (i just use the wrist length ones)
never go into the tank w/o gloves if you have more than a baby papercut on your hands
never let anything touch, smell, or taste water that has come from your tank.
y'all should be fine.
,
Time to turn over a new leaf me thinks:dance2:
