Palytoxin, my story...

jrpark22000

Premium member
Well, that was one of the worst nights of my life. I’ve done some pretty painful things in my life, knocking out 6 front teeth, large cuts, 10’ fall onto my head into a dumpster and the list goes on. This was right up there and I’m still pretty messed up.

It starts off last night about 5pm. I decided to pull a couple magnets rock shelves out of my tank. One was my Z&P grow out areas. Now I’ve done this next step a couple dozen times, just never with these two Z&P varities. I’ve an invasive yellow paly that I hate. To get rid of it, I’ll take the rock its growing on and soak it in vinegar. The palys slime right up and after 15-30 min you can just pluck them off with tweezers, easy peasy. I usually soak them for another 30 min to clean up all the paly roots to prevent them coming back quickly.

So last night I dunk the rocks into 1.5g of vinegar. If you’ve ever cook things in acid, it’s a pretty powerful and pervasive smell. I’ve grown use to it over the years so didn’t think twice that this time, it was a lot stronger than normal. It took several dips and probably 2 hours to get the rocks clean. All the while I’m going in and out of the basement utility room that is behind a door in the fish room/man cave. Somewhere around 7-8 my allergies started going haywire. To the point mucus was draining into my lungs. Again, I’m like oh well. I get done and clean up all the rock, acid and take the Z&P gook outside into the garbage.

I’m downstairs the rest of the night in the fish room/man cave working here on CR. The smell’s still strong and I’m feeling worse as time goes by. About 12:30 I decided to go to bed, by now my chest is quite painful. Like a real bad flu, it’s difficult to breathe and is labored. I’m also now coughing the phlegm (pretty thick by this point) and it tastes just like the palys smelled. Pretty nasty, right?

Within the hour it gets worse. I’m uncontrollably shivering. Plus the fun of body aches like a really bad flu, but worse. By 2-3 am just the pressure from laying in bed SUCKS. Every muscle including my eyes, scalp, toes, and fingers is just killing me. Still uncontrollably shivering I literally spent the entire night 10 minutes at a time, each 10 minutes that go by I’m hoping something is going to start feeling better. By about 5am, I go from cold shivers to hot sweats but the body aches are dropping in intensity. Finally about 7am I’m to the point of being able doze.

It’s now 1pm and I’m still pretty jacked up. It wasn’t a flu, or food poisoning. The only thing I can figure out is palytoxin. If the smell was thick enough in the air to leave the taste of the smell in mucus, what chemicals were also in the air and on the particles I'm breathing in? With the particles/chemicals so thick in the air, being filtered out in my sinus’, then dropping straight into my lungs, I can only think it’s a pretty easy way to get toxin in my blood stream.

Or just call me crazy for all of this. Something was very very wrong, what else would t have been?
 
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/blo...-personal-experience-with-palytoxin-poisoning
Sounds about right...


And there's always this story of actualy boiling rocks.
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/blo...-poisoning-almost-killed-myself-wife-and-dogs

After rereading the article, I'm a damm dumbass... Even last night as I lie there wondering what's going on, I was thinking of this story. Thinking to myself, nah, it couldn't be the same. He boiled his rocks, I only cooked them using acid. Apparently palys don't care how you kill them, if you can smell it strongly, you could be getting the effects.
 
I have seen stuff like this on other forums. It sounds like you might have gotten a dose of the airborne palytoxins. Here is an old RC thread with a similar story: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2253493

Check out the results for searching "airborne palytoxin reef" on google: https://www.google.com/search?q=air...57.5494j1j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8

It might not be a bad idea to stop by a doctor to have them check you out and see if there is anything they can prescribe you to prevent any future issues from this instance.

Glad you're ok Josh


Edit: I typed this up before your second comment.
 
I have seen stuff like this on other forums. It sounds like you might have gotten a dose of the airborne palytoxins. Here is an old RC thread with a similar story: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2253493
Check out the results for searching "airborne palytoxin reef" on google: https://www.google.com/search?q=air...57.5494j1j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8
It might not be a bad idea to stop by a doctor to have them check you out and see if there is anything they can prescribe you to prevent any future issues from this instance.
Glad you're ok Josh

Edit: I typed this up before your second comment.


Thanks Joe. I'll make it through, just going to be sore and hard to breathe for a couple days, based on the sotries out there. I'm still amazed how stupid I was...
 
Thanks Joe. I'll make it through, just going to be sore and hard to breathe for a couple days, based on the sotries out there. I'm still amazed how stupid I was...

Just like anything in this hobby, sometimes you have to learn your mistakes the hard way. I wouldn't say you were stupid. If you do it again, then yeah, you're stupid lol


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damn ,, so venegaring the rock is out of question too now ( well the ones with palys ) how are they soo much stronger than us ? lol may be cause they have been living for 1000s of years ?

last nite i glued down a couple of acros and after done and washing my hands with soap like 4 times i can still smell the stench of their mucus on my hands .. wow .. i had to use hand sanitizer before handling the kid (like its gonna help much :) )
 
Well the 10 ft fall on the head explains everything now mystery solved

I don't remember most of the day that it happened. Have no memory of what happened, just the bruises and severe concussion. We peaced together the likely story afterwards, slipped off the forks of a forktruck while dumping a 4'x4'x4' box of scrap into a 30yd dumpster in the winter. Likely landed first on the fork on my side, causing the back injury, then falling into the dumpster head first.

Good times...
 
damn ,, so venegaring the rock is out of question too now ( well the ones with palys ) how are they soo much stronger than us ? lol may be cause they have been living for 1000s of years ?

That's the thing Tin. I've been doing this for years! Countless times. Last night was the first time I've tried killing these two species. Purple death palys and some green/brown zoas.
 
That's the thing Tin. I've been doing this for years! Countless times. Last night was the first time I've tried killing these two species. Purple death palys and some green/brown zoas.

i bet its .. Purple death palys

those nuclear and purple death paly kinds are the ones i think have most paly toxin .. they are good hunters and eaters too ( pods ) unlike other zoa/palys species ..
 
i bet its .. Purple death palys

those nuclear and purple death paly kinds are the ones i think have most paly toxin .. they are good hunters and eaters too ( pods ) unlike other zoa/palys species ..

I guess we should be more cautious of poisoness stuff that has "death" in their name lol


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Yeah, I didn't associate anything to the name Death (more than just a name) before yesterday. I can't be certain which one and I'm not going to experiment to find out!
 
I'm not going to share this link with the wife...

https://www.reefs.com/blog/2015/09/15/the-dangers-and-myths-of-zoa-toxicity-part-2/
"Reported to be the second most lethal naturally occurring toxin, miniscule amounts could easily kill a person. It functions by disrupting the sodium/potassium pumps which are vital to the proper functioning of our bodies, shutting down control over major processes like neural signalling and regulation of cell volume. Basically, it opens the doors to our cells so that any ion can pass through. Experimental study has shown that within 5 minutes of exposure, mitochondria cease to function, leading to the inevitable death of the affected cell. Associated with this is an increase in stress proteins, a decrease in haemoglobin, and rhabdomyolysis—the death of muscle fibers—which can lead to kidney failure and death."
 
Yikes that is scary -- glad you are OK.

I was gonna ask about the dumpster story too lol glad somebody beat me to it :)
 
I'm not going to share this link with the wife...

https://www.reefs.com/blog/2015/09/15/the-dangers-and-myths-of-zoa-toxicity-part-2/
"Reported to be the second most lethal naturally occurring toxin, miniscule amounts could easily kill a person. It functions by disrupting the sodium/potassium pumps which are vital to the proper functioning of our bodies, shutting down control over major processes like neural signalling and regulation of cell volume. Basically, it opens the doors to our cells so that any ion can pass through. Experimental study has shown that within 5 minutes of exposure, mitochondria cease to function, leading to the inevitable death of the affected cell. Associated with this is an increase in stress proteins, a decrease in haemoglobin, and rhabdomyolysis—the death of muscle fibers—which can lead to kidney failure and death."

lol then they wont let us touch our tanks anymore ..
 
i got mild case of polytoxin from plucking yellow palys of a candy cane colony, I got poisoned by the cuts on my hands. mine wasn't that bad, but still it sucked. had the same flu symptoms you have described
 
That's crazy. Glad you're okay Josh! I read an article on that a while back and I remember something about the drab brown palys being very likely to have palytoxin. Thankfully I am not at the point yet where I need to get rid of any palys but I think at this point I might just try to pick them with tweezers or something. Or just throw out that rock if not too big and get another one... My wife has bad athsma so I would not risk it around her with vinegar or boiling.
 
Glad you're ok bro, I got really sick from palytoxins years ago when I first got into the hobby. I had to be hospitalized and the nurses kept asking me did I leave the country, because they couldn't find what was wrong with me.


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Glad you're ok bro, I got really sick from palytoxins years ago when I first got into the hobby. I had to be hospitalized and the nurses kept asking me did I leave the country, because they couldn't find what was wrong with me.
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Thanks Smitty.

Wow. The same thing was running through my hed last night, there's no way the hospital would believe what I think caused it and there is so little toxin in the blood, they wouldn't be able to detect it.
 
Thanks Smitty.

Wow. The same thing was running through my hed last night, there's no way the hospital would believe what I think caused it and there is so little toxin in the blood, they wouldn't be able to detect it.

From the story that I read about it there isn't an antivenom for palytoxin so all they can do is treat the symptoms. Your best bet is to print out whatever you can find and bring it with you. Or ask whoever is taking you to google it and show them.
 
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