- Hi ghouls and goblins, this talk is about all the animals
in your tank, the kind that can make you sick.
So, in your tank you might have a zoanthus.
And I think everyone is familiar with zoanthus or palythoa
and all of those things actually contain palytoxin.
It's more common in palythoa than in zoanthus,
but there's no way for you to tell
which is which in your tank.
There's no visual distinction between those two genuses.
Palytoxin targets the sodium-potassium pump
that is present in every cell in your body
and it binds to that pump and locks it open
which destroys the cell's ability to regulate
those ions in and out of its cellular membrane
thereby killing the cell.
And because it can kill just about any cell in your body,
that's why the symptoms that people report
from palytoxin exposure are so different
because it depends on what part of your body
is being killed by the toxin.
When you're cleaning your tank or scrubbing
around zoanthus or trying to kill zoanthus
that are taking over your tank, maybe pouring
boiling water on them, something like that,
they are going to release mucus.
I'm sure any of you who have reef tanks,
it's probably most of you, know, that when you mess
with coral, they get all mucusy and slimy.
That is the slime that contains the palytoxin
that is being released by the zoanthus.
So if you're scrubbing them away,
you are getting some mist into the air
and that mist contains some level of palytoxin.
It might not be enough to make you sick,
but it might be, there's no way for you to tell.
Conversely, if you're trying to kill them,
and you're pouring boiling water over them,
all that steam that's coming off could have palytoxin in
and you're breathing that in in the same way.
If you get it in your eyes, like you're struggling
with a brush and you get some of that gunk in your eye,
it can cause permanent blindness.
If you were to breathe it in via a mist or steam,
something like that, it's going to kill cells in your lungs
and you will have breathing trouble.
You'll have wheezing, stuff like that,
it'll be an ER visit and an intensive care stay
for a few days at least with an oxygen mask over your face
so that you can actually breathe enough
so that you don't die.
There is no treatment for palytoxin poisoning.
The treatment is merely to keep you alive
long enough for your body to repair the damage
that is caused by that palytoxin exposure.
A lot of people also report numbness and tingling
in their hands when they're cleaning a tank
that contains lots of zoanthus.
This is because palytoxin can be absorbed through your skin.
And when it does, you might notice a metallic taste
in your mouth, tingling, numbness in your hands.
It's generally not too bad if you only get it on your skin.
But again, if you notice those symptoms,
pay attention to them, and if they get worse,
maybe a trip to the emergency room
might be the best option for you.
There are no recorded cases that I could find
of someone dying from palytoxin exposure
in the home aquarium sort of environment.
This is because palytoxin is most dangerous
if you ingest it and I don't know about you,
but zoanthus don't look tasty to me.
I'm not gonna fry them up and eat them for dinner.
So you're not gonna be eating palytoxin at home.
And then the other option is breathing it in
or getting it into your blood, which again,
it's, you're not gonna be injecting zoanthus
into your bloodstream, so not gonna happen at home.
Most likely you'll have some kind of a,
a big sort of cut while you're cleaning your tank.
So if you do have a cut while you're cleaning your tank,
there's a whole host of other fun things
that you can worry about.
Things like staph infections are really common
from home aquariums, even from swimming at the beach
you can get a staph infection if you have open wound.
But, more fun than staph, you have things
like mycobacterium marinum, which again
probably isn't going to kill you
but it can cause months of discomfort,
surgery and hardcore antibiotics to get rid of it
because it's not going to be cured by something
like amoxicillin that you take for a couple days.
So mycobacterium marinum takes a while to grow.
It doesn't grow very fast.
So if you have an open wound in your inner tank
or maybe, maybe you get scratched
while you're cleaning your tank,
and that wound is just not healing,
it's kinda, like scabs up, gets mucusy and disgusting
and just not peeling for a while,
you might actually have a staph infection
or a mycobacterium marinum infection.
These are very uncommon in normal day to day exposures.
If you have something like this, it's important to tell
your doctor that you do have a tank at home
and that you were cleaning it or involved in it,
exposing this wound to your tank water.
Because it's not gonna be something
that doctors usually think of.
Mycobacterium marinum is in the same family
of diseases as the one that causes tuberculosis,
and just like tuberculosis, as I mentioned,
it's going to be months and months
of really strong antibacterial drugs to get rid of it,
and we're talking almost a year,
maybe longer than a year of antibiotics.
If you wait too long, you could have amputations,
things like that, because once it really gets going,
it is not easy to cure and once your skin
is infected, they have to get rid of that infected skin
so maybe minor surgeries up to amputations
to get rid of those infections.
You can also get other infections, very rarely,
but you can get things like Vibrio,
which can kill you in a couple days.
So have fun with that one as well.
Though I couldn't find any record
of anyone actually getting that from their home aquarium.
So there are another couple things
that you might get in your home aquarium,
but I think if you had things like a blue-ringed octopus
or a cone snail, you'd probably know,
'cause you put them there and in theory,
you would have put them there
knowing the risk that you were taking.
So we'll not go into things that can kill you
in a matter of minutes like a cone snail
or a blue-ringed octopus.
There are certainly labs that keep these things
but I don't know that anyone in a home aquarium
would have one just on their own.
There are other things in your tank that cause trouble
and irritation, but won't put you in the hospital.
Things like bristle worms.
I have seen some bristle worms that are,
I kid you not, just as big around as
a number two pencil that you would use in school.
When those things grow, they have, as their name
would suggest, bristles all over them,
and those can break off into your skin
and cause real bad irritation.
It feels a little bit like burning.
Vinegar can help dissolve those,
but once you have them in your skin,
you'll kinda know it, and it's just gonna be
an irritation for the next few days
that you'll have to deal with.
You might also have venomous fish in your tank.
I think everyone knows that things like lionfish
are venomous, things like rabbitfish,
they also have venomous spines.
Some people do keep scorpions and waspfish in their tanks.
Those, again, if you're getting something like that,
you know that they're poisonous,
they're venomous to begin with,
and so you're not going to worry too much
about running into those without knowing it,
because there are special care requirements around those.
But some things that I did find that are interesting,
even things like tangs, a lot of people believe
that the spines at the base of the tang's tail,
those things that get their name, surgeonfish, for,
actually have poison glands associated with them.
And so things like the scopas tang,
I found a lot of reports of people getting cut
by their scopas tang and then having much more
of a reaction that you'd expect from just a cut.
But these are anecdotal.
I don't know that for sure they are something
that you need to worry about too much.
And then of course, tangs aren't overly aggressive,
if you're not messing with them too much,
you're probably not going to get stung by them
or get cut by them.
I hope this was interesting.
Let me know what you thought.
Let me know if you've ever encountered
maybe numbness after cleaning your tank
and you have a bunch of zoanthus.
Or if you've ever actually had something
like mycobacterium, hopefully not,
but maybe there's a couple of you out there,
it'll be interesting to know what your experience
with the critters in your tank has been.
Remember, always use gloves, especially if you have
bristle worms in your tank because they love to hide
under rocks and the places where your fingers go
is most likely to be where those bristle worms are.
And just a simple latex or a nitrile glove
will do wonders to prevent stings
from those kinds of things.
And then it also do great to wash your hands
after they come out of the tank,
because who knows what is in that water,
especially once you've started to put things
like live rock from the ocean
and you're bringing all sorts of interesting bacteria
from who knows where and putting it in,
growing it in your home aquarium.
So yeah, let me know what you thought.
I will see you next time, bye.