Culling zoa/palys

[shollis2814]

Hi all, I've been offline for a long time, but the tank has been rocking along.

33-long tank that's been running for years. I have some large green palys that are taking over. I have read that these are on the nastier end of the spectrum in terms of palytoxin.

The immediate issue is that I have a small colony of eagle eye zoas that are now separated on the sandbed, but there are 3 large green palys in the midst. I also have a colony of orange zoas that are started to sahde out my acans. I am worried the palys will win at chemical warfare. I think since it's only 3 or 4 of them in each spot of them I can use lemon juice down the gullet.

I have 4 rocks that are covered with a mixture of green palys and some really large brown button polys or palys.

Two of these rocks I really like how they sit in my tank and I don't want to trade them in for LFS credit. I think I want to cull some of my green palys and have a little more real estate.

So, if I wanted to nuke the rock with a bleach dip, other than gloves a mask and eye protection, what else should I do? I know palytoxin is not a protein, and I couldn't find anything about half life.

I'm not worried about making the rocks safe after bleaching. I've done that a lot with some prime dips, etc.

Will the palytoxin break down over time? Can the rock 'hold it' and leach it out over time? I wouldn't do both at once. But one is on top of the other and probably have 70-100 polyps on each rock.

If the safer method is to take 3-4 out every other day with lemon juice and watch parameters and other corals, I can be patient.

I've finally got some stargazers, eagle eyes, and some cool orange ones taking off and want to give them a chance.

Thoughts? Advice? Tips? Like I said, I have a healthy respect for them and just want to err on the side of caution.

 

[CoralB]

The palys are nothing to mess with . I would not bleach them , would not use lemon juice . Their are night mare issues of people loosing eyes and or sending whole family’s to the hospital. Personally I don’t even trust taking them out of the tank or out of the water . I would consult someone with expertise with them . In the mean time run a really good grade carbon toxicity down in the tank . I can’t remember if there was threads on this site or if I read about them on a google lookup. If they aren’t threatened or irritated they are fine but if they get ticks and defensive that is when bad things happen . Please be careful !! . You might want to restart this thread starting with the headline of palys toxicity or paly help . I wish I knew who in this group you could pm , I don’t good luck

 

[Chrisv.]

My understanding is that bleach does inactivate palytoxin. But be extremely careful with this. Not long ago, there was a post from a member who left some green palys out in the sun, in Alabama, for a month. He thought the palytoxin was probably inactive due to cooking in the heat. Brought the frag plugs in, put them in a bucket with a pump, and his whole family ended up in the ER the same day. I forget if his cat died or just got sick.

 

[littlebigreef]

When it comes to working with palys a healthy respect is a good thing to have. I've worked with any number of these both in my own systems as well as during periods when I did aquarium maintenance so removal is something I've done more than a few times.

Distilled down your question is essentially 'how do I safely remove these so I can keep the rocks?"

Trying to treat in tank can be a protracted endeavor that has the potential to cause more problems- in essence you're trying to kill something with a caustic agent that's also acidic and then relying on your system (33 gal at that) to be able to absorb that hit.

There's two approaches I've done that have worked.

First option, you can take the rocks and put them in a container with fresh water and let osmosis do its work. Naturally if you can do this outside away from your home or on a balcony all the better. The higher salt concentration within the tissue of animal will cause freshwater to enter the paly, cause it to swell and die (just like when we freshwater dip fish). This doesn't create the noxious fumes (from my experience) that placing it in a container with vinegar, murtaic acid, bleach, boiling, etc does because you're not dissolving the tissue. I moved last year and to prep some rock I did just this and it worked perfectly without any issues. Naturally you need to be mindful of where you do it and the liquid that's left over once everything has died.

Second option, employed during my service days where I had limited time to do things on site, was to basically take a large pair of bone cutters to the rock and remove chunks of palys at a time by carving up the rock. Eventually, little bit at a time, the colony gets to the point it's either manageable or dies. However, a few things to consider:

1) Depending on the type/shape of rock this might not work or might not be desirable if it significantly alters the rock.
2) You've got to be able to get to the mat, chopping just the heads off is exactly what you want to avoid.
3) Like the lemon juice observation above doing this in tank can cause issues as you're actively trying to kill something- again, that 33 gal is a smaller volume of water.

A hybrid option here is to chop off what you can and then put it in fresh water and let the rest die off as opposed to just putting the rocks 'as are' in the container. In that way you're minimizing the amount of material you're working with.

At the end of the day this is not a terribly complicated problem and can be done safely so long as you take your time. The things you have to avoid are tearing/grinding or otherwise liquifying the tissue via mechanical removal with a grinder, wire brush etc. Snipping chunks off with bone cutters is perfectly fine so long as you're getting the mat and not mashing everything up. You also have to avoid dissolving the tissue with chemicals/boiling as that consistently sickens people. Using hypo-saline/freshwater is the work around that doesn't (from my experience) liberate whatever toxins into the air. I did this with 4-5 softball sized pieces of rock and experienced no issues.

Standard disclaimer, people have varying degrees of sensitivity and PPE is generally a good idea. I've cut 10's of thousands of z's & p's by hand (admittedly I've largely avoided the texas trash/brown button types), I've gotten squirted in the eyes, juice in nicks/cuts while fragging, etc and while it doesn't feel great I still have both eyes and all my fingers. So, always work in a well lit area with some ventilation and gloves and glasses at a minimum.

 

[shollis2814]

Thank you every one. I do have a healthy respect for this stuff, and I am hearing you all. This is my approach right now.

1) I am experimenting with how many ccs of lemon juice it takes to kill one polyp. Yesterday I did .1, .2 and .3 ml on three heads in three separate areas and I am monitoring pH/alk, etc. I know the .3 is enough and .1 isn't.

2) I have a 6 headed Galaxia that I got as a frag. It was by itself, but I moved it closer to a few paly only rocks and I'm going to give that some time and see if I can do a natural culling.

3) I do have a cherub angel, but he has ignored everything but pulsing xenia (not a bad thing really).

4) All in all, this confirmed my hesitancy. A cool looking rock isn't worth the risk to me. Even though I would do this outside well ventilated with gloves and goggles. The stories about about bringing it back in....well, I have a post cancer wife who doesn't have the greatest immune system.

If the Galaxia doesn't work, I'll just trade the rocks in. Not shutting down the thread at all. I just wanted to respond to the answers here.

 

[Chrisv.]

Sounds like a good plan to me.

 

[3429810]

Aiptasia x works really well. In one of the tanks at work i just hit a half dozen palys or so with it every day an slowly whittled them down. Only a few left now. Obviously lemon juice is cheaper but letting them eat the aiptasia x seems to kill them almost 100% of the time.