Our mission

Palytoxin and ignorance strike again

I’ve wondered if the particular strain or species of the paly that is dangerous is known. They clearly aren’t all dangerous. There would be many more occurrences. And is there a specific mode of transmission? These guys were cleaning their tank after they broke it down. I heard another story where the guy boiled the rock and it was aspirated. I know I’ve fragged about 200 Mohawk zoas without gloves, mask, or eye protection (I’m not condoning or condemning such practices just stating what I did). Was I just lucky?
 
It seems to be the big palys. Julien sprung did a whole lecture on it and he went into great detail about how he got sick. He even sent a sample to a lab. It was a macna speech i think and it’s in YouTube.
 
All the cases I’ve seen involve the big brown ugly paly’s. Never heard of a case involving the pretty ornamental multicolored Paly and Zoa varieties we mostly keep. That said, since the toxin comes from a commensural bacteria or Dino that isn’t specific to a single species of Paly, I don’t think you can be completely sure just by looking at them.
 
I forget where I heard it, but the hawaiins used to use them as part of their weapons and seemed to know which kind(s) to use. I think their word meant something like death mat or something.
 
JVU said:
All the cases I’ve seen involve the big brown ugly paly’s. Never heard of a case involving the pretty ornamental multicolored Paly and Zoa varieties we mostly keep. That said, since the toxin comes from a commensural bacteria or Dino that isn’t specific to a single species of Paly, I don’t think you can be completely sure just by looking at them.
Click to expand...
This might be simply due to the fact that people eventually want to get rid of the ugly brown ones and since they grow all weedy they may go to extreme measures, the worst being boiling, I know I got one at the first BAR frag swap ever and it was a huge frag, it wasn't until later that I found how difficult they are to remove once in a tank. Where as if instead of ugly brown it was a rainbow colored one I might be less inclined to get rid of them.

Scientific read.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4771986/
 
sfsuphysics said:
This might be simply due to the fact that people eventually want to get rid of the ugly brown ones and since they grow all weedy they may go to extreme measures, the worst being boiling, I know I got one at the first BAR frag swap ever and it was a huge frag, it wasn't until later that I found how difficult they are to remove once in a tank. Where as if instead of ugly brown it was a rainbow colored one I might be less inclined to get rid of them.

Scientific read.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4771986/
Click to expand...
I think that reasoning is more than compensated for how incredibly common the pretty morphs are, at least 10x more. And how incredibly frequently the the prettier ones are handled and fragged, again at least 10x for any given colony. So probably the ugly morphs are messed with by hobbyists at least 100x less than the pretty ones, and yet all the reports I’ve seen of real world toxicity are the ugly ones. Plus there have been some limited lab studies that show the toxin in dangerous amounts in some plain brown and green paly’s but very little to no toxin in the other paly’s and zoas they looked at.

Thanks for the link, I’m planning to read it later today!
 
JVU said:
I think that reasoning is more than compensated for how incredibly common the pretty morphs are, at least 10x more. And how incredibly frequently the the prettier ones are handled and fragged, again at least 10x for any given colony. So probably the ugly morphs are messed with by hobbyists at least 100x less than the pretty ones, and yet all the reports I’ve seen of real world toxicity are the ugly ones. Plus there have been some limited lab studies that show the toxin in dangerous amounts in some plain brown and green paly’s but very little to no toxin in the other paly’s and zoas they looked at.
Click to expand...
Could be that most of those prettier ones are not palythoa (genus) and may be zonathus (genus) instead which don't have nearly the amount of palytoxin in them, but yeah wouldn't surprise me that different strains tend to have different concentrations of them. But then again we're getting into an expertise level that is well beyond my pay grade :D

I do recall reading though someone fragging the palythoas grandis using a razor blade and at one point putting said blade in his mouth to hold it (another set of hands) and sure enough zappo, while not as bad as people who try to boil them off an aerosolize the toxin, doesn't take much to have serious nasty results (fatal at hundreds of nanograms per kg if I recall).
 
sfsuphysics said:
Could be that most of those prettier ones are not palythoa (genus) and may be zonathus (genus) instead which don't have nearly the amount of palytoxin in them, but yeah wouldn't surprise me that different strains tend to have different concentrations of them. But then again we're getting into an expertise level that is well beyond my pay grade

I do recall reading though someone fragging the palythoas grandis using a razor blade and at one point putting said blade in his mouth to hold it (another set of hands) and sure enough zappo, while not as bad as people who try to boil them off an aerosolize the toxin, doesn't take much to have serious nasty results (fatal at hundreds of nanograms per kg if I recall).
Click to expand...
That link is a good resource on this topic. I’ve only read about 10% so far. It said that PLTX (paly toxin) was found in genera Palythoa and Zoanthus. Also, in 1995, a PLTX-like molecule was identified in benthic dinoflagellates of the genus Ostreopsis. In addition, PLTX and 42-hydroxy-PLTX were isolated from marine Trichodesmium spp. cyanobacteria [10]. However, a clear definition of the actual producing organism of PLTX is still a matter of debate.
 
I know, read dinoflagellate and was like "whaaaaaaaaaaa?" then I figured maybe not the same ones we get in our tank, kind of like how there's a bazillion species of "Asterina" starfish
 
sfsuphysics said:
I know, read dinoflagellate and was like "whaaaaaaaaaaa?" then I figured maybe not the same ones we get in our tank, kind of like how there's a bazillion species of "Asterina" starfish
Click to expand...

Nope, Dinoflagellate Ostreposis exist in our reef tanks.

I just killed them a few months ago in my frag tank.

Pic/vid I took of them under microscope
0F47D68A-76A3-454A-BF0C-3A49AD5A9894.jpeg



70FABB62-9F58-4EC1-B0D1-12F6B0125745.jpeg


In a bucket after siphoning out of tank.
0500A861-F7EE-444D-9221-77EA9653BA77.jpeg
 
  • Like
Reactions: JVU
A Aaron said:
What kind of microscope are you using? Very cool
Click to expand...

I got this one and just put my iPhone against the eye piece to take pics/vids. You can definitely get by with a less expensive microscope <$30 for identifying dino types, but I got this one to double as an educational toy for my kids.

AmScope M150C-I 40X-1000X All-Metal Optical Glass Lenses Cordless LED Student Biological Compound Microscope https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AM5XB5O/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_CPItDbM5Q1PAV
 
Interesting. I had almost exactly the same on my frag rack a while back, and simply assumed Cyano.
I do have an ancient conventional microscope.
But I am with Mike - how would I know what species??
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top