I sure could have used more information on it when starting out. Likely the worst I’ve ever felt in my entire life.
This toxin can be air born. Everyone involved (even ones that had no contact with the rocks/water/tank) were ill. I believe only certain palythoas have a substantial amount of this toxin to defend with, I've had lots of zoa's since then with no issues at all.
All of the symptoms Fencer described are true, especially the chills/aches.
This article explains EXACTLY with real values how toxic some palythoas in our aquariums are. The ones in my tank looked identical to the ones in the red-box column (d).
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%...l.pone.0018235
This article paints a good picture, what scares me is the PS at the bottom stating that palytoxin can be about 84x more lethal than the most venomous snake.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/no...tore-near-you/