Safety Concern!

[FuEl]

[Rufff]

Does every LFS have 2 have an AVA (seperate) license 2 carry marine stock even tho they R already selling freshwater & other stuff? If they dun, R they then breaking the law & tempting fate??? Why take the risk when U R a businessman & selling LS etc is yr livelihood? ... definitely not a wise move if U ask me.

[seamonkee]

AVA spy ninjas among us...

tsk... tsk....

Scary actually cause that's what happened to Yahoo Pets Classified... Previously, people were selling pythons, ferrets, hedgehogs and stuff till AVA clamp it down... hope they don't do this to us...

[flubberina13]

Does every LFS have 2 have an AVA (seperate) license 2 carry marine stock even tho they R already selling freshwater & other stuff? If they dun, R they then breaking the law & tempting fate??? Why take the risk when U R a businessman & selling LS etc is yr livelihood? ... definitely not a wise move if U ask me.

Yup...they have to get a licence just for Marine. Understand it from a popular LFS when I asked why they dun go into Marine when they are rather popular among those who keep marine aquaria. The response is that they need separate licence and can be quite troublesome and weighing the pros and cons, they decided against it.

[williammuk]

As this forum is opened to the public, it should come as no surprise that the authorities are also browsing here.

[Rufff]

So that might means some of the LFS R playing with fire right?? MayB they should take this into account ... 4 if they were 2 get caught by AVA, they have no one 2 blame but themselves.

[foxprime]

more bro sellers.. puggol fishfarms 2 of em. quite common for the past one month or so...been seeing them in almost every fish shop that i go to... bought two of them without realising their extent of poison....<sign> time to get surgical gloves

[seamonkee]

See what I mean? That's what I am afraid of... people buying them without realising they are playing with death...

No offence, foxprime.. but I believe you are "victim" too... just be careful when u handle your BROs... er... better not to even handle them...

[Achilles Tang]

Foxprime, cover your tank... octopuses are smart enough to crawl out and walk about.... no kidding.. you don't want anyone picking it up by mistake... or your pet dog or cat trying to bite it.

(I used to use live octopuses as bait when fishing... they always walk down the boat deck from out of the pail when you're not looking!)

Use a weight to hold down the cover, octopuses are stronger than they look!

[seamonkee]

Yup. Seen this documentary b4 where the octopus is clever and strong enoff to open a tightly sealed jar to take out a piece of prawn inside...

Hope your tank is covered tight and so is your night pyjamas... Won't want to wake up missing your "prawn"...

[chrislwp]

Blue ring octopus wun sting thru the holes in the container..their suckers are harmless. It is the mouthpart a.k.a the beak you have to beware of.

Anyway....$35 for a blue ring octopus? I saw somewhere selling for $10. At least that aquarium boss was responsible enough not to sell it to newbies. But....$35?!?!!?!? Sold by an irresponsible aquarium owner!?!?! That really pisses me too...imagine you pay $25 more and end up dead. I think if that happened to me I would haunt the guy for the rest of his life.

Tanzy>> I agree with you...but the problem with A*A is that they spend their resources doing the most futile things when they can focus their efforts on the big picture. If you ask me...I would say they are banning many many harmless animals...while they are turning a blind eye to many other harmful animals besides the blue ring octopus. Take the common terrapins in petshops for instance..not banned till now...see how many are in the ecosystems here now...decimating the fragile aquatic life. Sometimes I really wonder if they know anything at all.

As I have not seen 1 in LFs except underwater world, I am wondering how they can take it out and put into those small container without agitating it.

Is that a real Blue Ring Octopus which has sufficient poison to kill 28 adults or just a similar looking type but not poisonous?

[Achilles Tang]

There is only one species of octopi with blue rings on its body. It should be easy enough to ID.

[FuEl]

I know a blue ring octopus when I see one...Such obvious blue pulsating rings...wat else could it have been?

[seamonkee]

Yup. I think there's a recent surge of LFS selling BROs... really they should ban it... just my opinion...

[Acanthurus pyroferus]

Yup. I think there's a recent surge of LFS selling BROs... really they should ban it... just my opinion...

I guess it's not under the AVA lists of endangered species , unless theres another list of poisonous creatures banned in Singapore. Blue rings don't jump out of the water to bite you and only ,unless provoked with close proximity such as your finger then you'd better check with the hospitals if they have stored enough anti-venoms for this kind of bites. People have got bitten by walking barefoot in lagoons and uxploring under rocks with their bare hands at close range , especially children. This species is for the experienced aquarist and one should never pick a blue ring with your bare hands. Anybody knows , where they're selling the "Box Jelly Fish".......

[Achilles Tang]

There is NO anti-venom for BRO!

[Acanthurus pyroferus]

There is NO anti-venom for BRO!

There is by the way...unless you're fast enough to reach it! The blue ring is not one of the most poisonous creature on this planet even though it's deadly enough. Better keep up to date with your discovery channel! It also depends on the constitution of the person bitten as well! So reefers better keep yourself in top shape!

[Achilles Tang]

Fighting poison with poison?

Nah... I don't anyone has been able to develop an anti-venom for BRO bites yet.

[Achilles Tang]

Taken off http://www.barrierreefaustralia.com/the-gr...ngedoctopus.htm

General Information:

With a beak that can penetrate a wet-suit, they are one little cute creature to definitely look at BUT Don't touch.

The bite might be painless, but this octopus injects a neuromuscular paralysing venom. The venom contains some maculotoxin, a poison more violent than any found on land animals. The nerve conduction is blocked and neuromuscular paralysis is followed by death. The victim might be saved if artificial respiration starts before marked cyanosis and hypotension develops. The blue-ringed octopus is the size of a golf ball but its poison is powerful enough to kill an adult human in minutes. There's no known antidote. The only treatment is hours of heart massage and artificial respiration until the poison has worked its way out of your system.

The venom contains tetrodotoxin, which blocks sodium channels and causes motor paralysis and occasionally respiratory failure. Though with fixed dilated pupils, the senses of the patients are often intact. The victims are aware but unable to respond.

Although the painless bite can kill an adult, injuries have only occurred when an octopus has been picked out of its pool and provoked or stepped on.

SYMPTOMS

Onset of nausea.

Hazy Vision. ( Within seconds you are blind.)

Loss of sense of touch, speech and the ability to swallow.

Within 3 minutes, paralysis sets in and your body goes into respiratory arrest.

The poison is not injected but is contained in the octopus's saliva, which comes from two glands each as big as its brain. Poison from the one is used on its main prey, crabs, and is relatively harmless to humans. Poison from the other gland serves as defense against predators. The blue-ringed octopus either secretes the poison in the vicinity of its prey, waits until it is immobile and then devours it, or it jumps out and envelops the prey in its 8 tentacles and bites it.

First aid for blue-ringed octopus bites

Pressure-immobilization is a recommended first aid. Prolonged artificial respiration may also be required. May require supportive treatment including mechanical ventilation until the effects of the toxin disappear. There is no antivenom available in Australia.

Mouth to mouth resuscitation can keep the victim alive and the poison gradually wears off after 24 hrs, apparently leaving no side effects.

[Achilles Tang]

What makes blue-rings so deadly?

Blue-ringed octopuses are among the deadliest animals in the sea. Throughout their range in Australia and the eastern Indo-Pacific, several humans suffer bites each year. Unfortunately, some of these are fatal. In Australia where blue-rings occur in shallow coastal waters and can be relatively common in areas frequented by beach-goers, there have been dozens of reported bites and several deaths. Typically, the victim is unaware of the danger and either picks up the innocuous looking octopus or inadvertently contacts it. The bite is slight and produces at most only a small laceration with no more than a tiny drop of blood and little or no discoloration. Bites are usually reported as being painless. Often the victim doesn't even know that he had been bitten. This can make it difficult for emergency and medical personnel to determine the cause of a patient's distress. In fact, there is some question as to whether the octopus even needs to bite to envenomate a human. In cases with prolonged contact, the venom might pass directly through the skin. While most severe envenomations appear to involve bites, I can report developing mild local neurological symptoms after immersing my hand in sea water in which a large blue-ring had been shipped.

Depending on how much venom has been transferred into the wound, the onset of symptoms can be quite rapid. Within five to ten minutes, the victim begins to experience parasthesias and numbness, progressive muscular weakness and difficulty breathing and swallowing. Nausea and vomiting, visual disturbances and difficulty speaking may also occur. In severe cases, this is followed by flaccid paralysis and respiratory failure, leading to unconsciousness and death due to cerebral anoxia. Interestingly, the victim's heart continues to beat until extreme asphyxia sets in. Some victims report being conscious, but unable to speak or move. They may even appear clinically dead with pupils fixed and dilated. Not all bites result in the transfer of venom. The severity of symptoms is dose-dependent. Smaller adults and especially children are most at risk.

The venom of blue-ringed octopuses is contained in their saliva. In the late 1960s, the primary active toxin was extracted from the greatly enlarged posterior salivary glands of an Australian species of blue-ringed octopus, Hapalochlaena maculosa. These globular shaped glands are situated in the anterior body cavity behind the brain. Ducts from each gland join to form a common duct that passes down through the brain and opens into the mouth cavity. The toxin was characterized as a low molecular weight, non-protein molecule and was named maculotoxin. It was recognized to be similar to tetrodotoxin (TTX), the extremely deadly toxin found in pufferfishes Experiments with rabbits showed that a single adult blue-ringed octopus weighing just 25 g possessed enough venom to fatally paralyze 10 large humans.

Subsequent work demonstrated that the maculotoxin is in fact TTX. TTX is found not only in blue-rings and many fishes in the family Tetraodontidae (hence the name tetrodotoxin), but also in several other groups of animals including California newts (genus Taricha), central American harlequin frogs (genus Atelopus), as well as a scattering of invertebrates including a South American tunicate (sea squirt), a sea star, several snails, some xanthid crabs, a horseshoe crab, two ribbon worms, some arrow worms, and a flatworm. It was a mystery why such a diversity of unrelated organisms would all evolve the same toxin, until it was recently discovered that bacteria associated with many of these animals actually produce TTX. This is the case in blue-ringed octopuses. Their salivary glands harbor dense colonies of TTX-producing bacteria. The blue-rings have evolved a symbiotic relationship with the bacteria, providing them ideal living conditions while using the toxin they produce to subdue prey and as part of their highly advertised defense.

TTX is a potent neurotoxin that blocks the movement of sodium (Na+) ions across neural membranes by attaching to a Na+ channel receptor and capping the Na+ channel. TTX is particularly effective blocking the propagation of nervous impulses in mammalian myelinated peripheral nerves which produces flaccid voluntary muscle paralysis. This interferes with the muscles of the diaphragm and chest wall and leads to respiratory failure. There is little or no direct effect of TTX on the heart or brain (because it does not cross the blood-brain barrier) until a lack of oxygen causes these organs to fail. One milligram of TTX can kill a person, making it one of the most potent natural toxins known. There is no antidote to TTX. Treatment consists of life-supportive measures including artificial ventilation. This is why researchers in my laboratory studying blue-ringed octopus are required to work in pairs and must be trained in CPR. Patients who survive 24 hours typically make a full recovery, unless lack of oxygen to the brain has caused permanent damage. Interestingly, blue-ringed octopuses are not affected by TTX, probably because they have evolved a slightly different sodium channel receptor that does not interact with the TTX molecule.

[Acanthurus pyroferus]

mouth to mouth resusitation? Yikes ! Tetrodoxin is found in puffers as well but luckily they don't bite humans! and theres the geographic cone snail as well with the same poison an anti-venom to it. Blue Rings maybe the most venomous creature in the sea or so but overall they're not the most poisonous. After all most anti-venoms are made from the actual animals own defence machanism. So fight venom with venom is the natural thing to do. so reefers no need to worry , the venom wears off eventually and you all will be safe!

[Achilles Tang]

The top 3 most venomous creatures in the sea are:

1. blue-ringed octopus

2. The box jellyfish

3. sea snake Hydrophis belcheri

So fight venom with venom is the natural thing to do.  so reefers no need to worry , the venom wears off eventually and you all will be safe!

Yeah right... if you make it through total heart and lung failure first!

[andy777]

Hello, BR Octopus for sell??? That's a illegal!! If I were you guys, I'll put a writing or complaint on newspaper about this matter (sorry, I'm indonesian so I could not anything ) Let's not wait until someone's mortality is in danger!

We don't have the problem here as our fishes is mostly local one. The most deadly saltwater fishes that I've ever seen here on the local shops, perhaps scorpions, lion fishes, sharks, triggers;).

[hamannbmw]

The top 3 most venomous creatures in the sea are:

1. blue-ringed octopus

2. The box jellyfish

3. sea snake Hydrophis belcheri

Yeah right... if you make it through total heart and lung failure first!

Haha.... tats a good one..

[Rufff]

Blue Ring Octopus 1/3.