Did my tank poison me ?

Richard savage

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To start my dad and I have been in this hobby for close to 15-20 years now and have never had anything happen like this before, we were in the middle of setting up a large 290 gallon tank in his living room, the tank was filled with Rodi water and we added a new to us Fritz salt mix (red box) from our lfs. Afterwards we threw a large wave maker in there to disrupt and mix it in, about 2 hours later my siblings small dog started acting weird, breathing heavy and kind of twitching about, we thought maybe he got into something but we're not sure. About 2 hours after that when my wife and I got home, we got really cold and started getting the shakes, our muscles were spasming uncontrollably, which was Then followed by extreme overheating, and then I started profusely throwing up everywhere. During this time we kept Communication open with my dad and the rest of the family at his house and they were experiencing the same thing. My wife and I had both eaten before we went over so we know it's not food or drink related. It definitely felt like it was some kind of poisoning that lasted about 6 hours. Based on what we had looked up on the internet we assumed it had maybe been sodium poisoning ? we just hydrated really heavy and eventually it went away but just curious if anyone else has ever experienced this or even heard of this happening before. Online I saw that possibly the fine salt particles got into our lungs and dissolved into our bloodstream and threw off the salt water ratio but we have done this a million times with no issue, a family freind who is a nurse Said it sounded like say ammonia poisoning to him and that it might be a reason but there's nothing in the tank. Only other thing out of the normal, was a bunch of rock we brought in from the garage that had been out there for 6 months that came from tear down to pre-scape on the ground below the tank to get an idea of what we wanted to do but I can't imagine it would toxic after this long. Amy ideas are appreciated
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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go see a doctor, but no I do not think this came from a reef

if you'd mentioned owning 1 single polyp of palythoa you'd have a thousand confirmations in favor of reef doom. not as written above though, go see doc

pokes and scrapes can infect for sure, but not aerosolized ammonia/that's not coming from your reef and it's not reef salt either.
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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do you have protopalythoa corals in the tank/ probably not

the descrip was an empty tank with just fritz salt in it. I cannot attribute any possible harm aerosolized from that.
 

Lost in the Sauce

BANGERANG!!!!
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There's some definite consistency there of symptoms to palytoxin exposure.

From what I understand, palytoxin doesn't degrade when dried out, heated, frozen...

The rock could have been a source.
 
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Richard savage

Richard savage

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Yeah the tank was completely empty with nothing in it but I could go back and check all of his dry rock as far as I know the rocks had a lot of hair algea on them when we broke it down but no coral
 

Lost in the Sauce

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do you have protopalythoa corals in the tank/ probably not

the descrip was an empty tank with just fritz salt in it. I cannot attribute any possible harm aerosolized from that.
"Only other thing out of the normal, was a bunch of rock we brought in from the garage that had been out there for 6 months that came from tear down to pre-scape on the ground below the tank to get an idea of what we wanted to do but I can't imagine it would toxic after this long. Amy ideas are appreciated"
 
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Richard savage

Richard savage

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The rock has been sitting in his garage by the furnace so I'd imagine it'd be blowing into his house, would the toxins be that potent from just moving them around on the floor and leaving it there for a couple hours
 

Form or function: Do you consider your rock work to be art or the platform for your coral?

  • Primarily art focused.

    Votes: 17 8.3%
  • Primarily a platform for coral.

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  • A bit of each - both art and a platform.

    Votes: 136 66.7%
  • Neither.

    Votes: 10 4.9%
  • Other.

    Votes: 6 2.9%
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