Starting a discussion thread for Christine's show. 

Wayne Luallen sent this question via email.

I am requesting information how I might attend the meeting titled "MASNA Live: When Aquarium Attack: human aquarium-related diseases" with Christine Williams. I am not a member of MASNA, but suspect that would be a prerequisite.

This event was brought to my attention by the a gentleman at Marine Depot with whom I have been communicating about a respiratory issue both my wife and I experience when cleaning our 50 gallon reef aquarium. I have thoroughly researched the Internet but have come up with no references thus far to explain what is happening to us. Briefly for the past 1.5 years (the aquarium was set up 3 years, 4 months ago) the aquarium has become seemingly toxic to my health when cleaning. I am forced to wear a full carbon filter face mask (as used for toxic chemicals) to reduce the likelihood of getting an upper respiratory infection when I clean. I also wear full arm protection. I spend approx. 3 hours every 2-3 weeks cleaning. If I break it up to 1 hour increments over a couple of days there is less likelihood of an issue as long as I wear the mask, but if done all at once, even with the mask, I develop (as does my wife if she assists me) a dry throat followed within an hour by mild to more aggressive coughing. The next day the cough is productive and colored. I work in a medical clinic and have considered culturing the sputum, but have not yet. The symptoms (pretty lousy feeling besides the cough) last for 24 to 30 hours. As you might expect we would be most anxious to learn what may be causing this and how we might avoid the issue.

We are considering an ozone generator and/or carbon filtration, but there are potential drawbacks for the animals. While I consider our personal health of greater importance than the aquarium, neither my wife nor I wish to give up our reef aquarium.

I realize this goes beyond the primary purpose of this e-mail request (how we might arrange to attend Ms.Williams' online session) but perhaps you might have some suggestions for us.

Thanks very much,

Wayne Luallen

Here is a follow up from Wayne.

I cleaned the aquarium last Friday night. Saturday morning I had a productive cough even though I had pre-cleaned some in advance of the primary cleaning to expedite the time required so as to reduce the upper respiratory issue. (This is now my approach whenever I can. A shortened time cleaning leads to lessened symptoms.) All the same I did have a mildly productive cough and was able to provide the medical laboratory where I work (a multi-specialty medical clinic where I work in radiology) a sample Saturday morning, January 30th. This afternoon I went back to learn the results.

I had provided both sputum as well as a water sample, both per Christine's request. But I also provided a sample from the skimmer. Since it is my understanding that toxins are likely removed by the skimmer I was curious what I might find.

My sputum - essentially negative, save the typical bacteria that would be found. The Gram-Negative Petri dish was clean. A curiosity was that a stained slide of my sputum showed more puss cells (WBC's) than should be found with an unimpressive culture.

The aquarium water - also essentially negative with only a few growths of bacteria. The Gram-Negative was again essentially clean.

The skimmer water was another story - there was tremendous growth of bacteria and the Gram-Negative dish was loaded with bacterial growth.

Now the question remains: what was this bacterial growth? Our lab does not have the capacity to go much further.

I write you because I am unsure how to provide this to Christine or those who attended the forum. Can you pass it along, or provide me with the specifics of how I might do so to get the information in the right place?

After the on-line forum I began to suspect that a zoanthid is the likely source of our problem. I have a few species, but there is one that seems to I am especially suspicious of. I believe it is a Protopalythoa. I am not skilled at keying these animals, so am only guessing that the genus is correct. I can provide a photo(s) if that would prove helpful. I keep a diary of occurrences in our aquarium. These animals had just gotten well established when the issue first presented in January 2009. In the meantime I am harvesting some of these gradually to reduce the population with the ultimate goal over several months of removing them. With the removal of only a few at a time the skimmer production goes up dramatically - much more dramatically than I have ever seen when I have had to reduce a population of soft corals before.

Thanks for your assistance in the past (see below) and hope you can help me one more time so that I can get this information at least to Christine.

Thanks very much,

Wayne Luallen