Testing for coral toxins?

[demonsp]

Is there a way to test a tank for high toxins from coral. I have 3 types of star polyps and other types of coral but cant seem to keep zoo's . Could this be from too many star poylps. Ive tried everything else and they want to come home.

[m2434]

Maybe if you want to establish a medium sized pharmacutical company to pay for the expenses....

In your case it would probably be more efficient to run carbon, or Chemi-Clean etc...

[chrismunn]

would it really be that expensive to test for thoes toxins? if you know the species and genus of what you think is creating toxins, you should know exactly what to test for. that being said, i probably shouldnt even have asked if it would be expensive to test, cuz you know it will be. which brings us towards the origional question, where do you go to get thoes tests done? as far as i know they do not sell at home test kits for thoes things. if they did you would definately know about it by now. huh?

[greenbean36191]

Part of the problem is that you don't know what you're looking for. The chemicals responsible for the allelopathy are poorly understood. Probably the best studied class of chemicals is the terpenoids. Within that class of chemicals, some are used for protection and competition while others are used for reproduction. Just finding terpenoids in the water wouldn't tell you much. You would have to not only figure out each species of coral you have, but figure out the function of each of a suite of metabolites (since most functions aren't known) created by each one.

The simple answer is that even if you had access to a full lab you wouldn't be able to test the water for coral toxins in general. If there was a specific toxin you wanted to test for there are lots of water labs around the country that could probably test, though it wouldn't be a standard test so the cost would be astronomical.