3 ms·
I worked at an aquarium store (probably one of the ones mentioned in the story) for a long time, and was a pretty experienced and dedicated reefkeeper at my pea
by birken 16y ago
I worked at an aquarium store (probably one of the ones mentioned in the story) for a long time, and was a pretty experienced and dedicated reefkeeper at my peak, and I never knew this.
This situation must be incredibly unlikely though because I've dealt with thousands of Zooanthids and hundreds of customers over the years I never had anything like this happen nor heard about it from anybody. However, I certainly wish I had known so I could have warned customers about the risks, because in the aquarium world Zooanthids are considered a great starter coral because they are very hardy and don't require much light.
- RK 16y agoThe advice I always see online about handling zoanthids is "always wear gloves". I've always done so, but seen plenty of people who don't. On the other hand, there are plenty of other (often hidden) things in your average reef aquarium that can potentially injure you and leave your local emergency department at a loss. People don't normally get stung by fireworms (or whatever) 5000 miles away from the tropical ocean.
- flipbrad 16y agoFrom the Wikipedia article [1]: "each gram of the offending zoanthid contained enough venom to kill at least 125 grown men" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoantharia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoantharia