has a coral done this to you?

Okay I have a colony of seamats and a few pieces have fallen off...is this common for growth?



Well I decided to try and save these peices by using epoxy and while trying to attach them to a rock they decided to squirt their toxic juice in my face! Wow that scared me something big because I have read that their toxin can be quite lethal and there is no cure. Has this happened to anyone before?

 

Never came across that happening. I know that clams(Tridacna's) are able to shoot out water with some force, but never knew that Zoos could. Have to be careful as I know that their mucus is toxic and can be very irritating if you have an open wound or cut.

 

Nemo,

Be careful. This has happened to one of my friends. He got squirted in both the eye and the mouth. (Both of which have mucous membranes that readily accept toxins, germs, viruses, etc.). He had to go to the hospital and was very ill for quite some time. I told him to take a Benadryl immediately and the ambulance put him on a Benadryl drip via IV on the way to the hospital. Luckily, he was able to tell them what was going on as none of the doctors had ever heard of this poison.

The amount of toxin in zoanthids, parazoanthids (yellow polyps), palythoa (sea mat), etc is very low. You definately don't want this to happen if you are fragging protopalythoa though as the amount of toxins changes significantly. Whenever I deal with this family, I wear my glasses vs my contacts and always remember to wash my hands before eating or rubbing my face.

 

Severe allegic reactions are rare and usually exaggerated in many cases. Ive handled paly's and zoa's on a regular basis for over 2 years (in a working enviorment on a large scale) as my co-workers did.....all the reactions ive seen were due to personal allergies.

 

Well I don't think I'll attempt that again for a while. I think I'm fine, I have had no side effects. I was being very careful. It squirted me on the cheek.

I just wanted to save the piece that fell off.When they fall off they get caught in the flow and end up stuck to the ph intake.

 

There's no problem with trying to save them. I've been squirted by mushrooms, zoanthids, palythoa, etc. and I try to be careful with any species. Protopalythoa is a different story altogether.

You aren't going to have any problems with palytoxin with a seamat. I don't normally tell people this because I prefer that they are overly-cautious. However, since you've been squirted, I'll let you know that there's really no issue.

OoNickoC is correct. It's an allergic reaction that varies from person to person. With that said, the more someone is introduced to a particular allergen, the more likely that histamines will be produced and it can get bad like it did for my friend. That's why I told him to take a Benadryl (an anti-histimine).

 

cool, thanks for informing me.

 

I've heard of some pretty bad reactions from our friendly coral buddies, alwas wear gloves