The Puffer Forum

jnheinz wrote:Nevermind, I think I may just toss all that stuff in the trash after reading about fugu, Japan, terrible deaths... I just had to know what was in that lump.

Scares me to think people are tossing their puffers in the toilets when they die with all that toxin in their body, with no known antidote.

UH HUH, TTX cannot be broken down with heat or cooking. To be honest its not worth the risk of even the slightly contamination its 1000s more potent than cyanide and dont take much TTX to kill ya. Just bin everything get a new puffer and make a fresh start thats what I say

Personally, I wouldn't worry. Many puffers aren't even toxic and it is known that they lose a lot of their toxicity in captivity. Just don't go licking everything that touched it. Plus, I believe that FW puffers are not prone to the toxicity that SW ones are.

Flutter wrote:Personally, I wouldn't worry. Many puffers aren't even toxic and it is known that they lose a lot of their toxicity in captivity. Just don't go licking everything that touched it. Plus, I believe that FW puffers are not prone to the toxicity that SW ones are.

Pufferfish actually acquire the ability to produce these toxins from the food they eat, As it is certain types of bacteria that live in the Gut of a Pufferfish which produce the Tetrodotoxin and thus make puffers poisonous. A puffer that is not toxic acquires the bacteria which produce these toxins from the food it eats like Crustaceans etc. Once consumed the Bacteria multiply in the Puffers Organs and thus begin producing TTX and hence the puffer becomes poisonous. These same bacteria are found in the Salivary Glands of the Blue Ringed Octopus which actually use the puffer poison to paralyse and kill any prey it bites. Whereas puffers have the poison as a defensive mechanism, blue ringed octopuses will bite and Inject the Poison into you . V. Interesting stuff Wikipedia :p.

So in theory if you had a FW puffer that was not poisonous and you fed it foods like clams, cockles or crab etc that contained the TTX Bacteria, your puffer could become poisonous with no harm to himself

I get my information from scientific peer reviewed articles, not Wikipedia Don't trust wikipedia for anything x_x There's a lot more to it than that.

So then, is the presence of TTX in puffers really intended to be a defense mechanism or simply a naturally occuring side effect of the pufferfish's diet?

It has not been proven that it is used for defense. That's something that would be extremely hard to prove though so I don't see much research happening on it one way or another anywhere in the near future.

Flutter wrote:I get my information from scientific peer reviewed articles, not Wikipedia Don't trust wikipedia for anything x_x There's a lot more to it than that.

I really dont see whats funny about one of my sources of information? It just so happens that at the bottom of every wikipedia article is a list of quotations / sources as you would expect on any respectable informative document, so take a second look before you diss it .

El Scorpio wrote:So then, is the presence of TTX in puffers really intended to be a defense mechanism or simply a naturally occuring side effect of the pufferfish's diet?

Let me reiterate I dont think the presence of TTX in puffers is really a defense mech. as I think its really a consequence of their diet that they accumulate such bacteria and thus toxins. A few less well known species who predate on similar food stuffs that puffers do also accumulate the same bacteria and thus TTX in their bodies but to a lesser extent. As the bacteria that produce TTX are found thriving on certain Molluscs, Bivavles and other inverts.

Quoting wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrodotoxin - " Its name derives from Tetraodontiformes, the name of the order that includes the pufferfish, porcupinefish, ocean sunfish or mola, and triggerfish, several species of which carry the toxin. Although tetrodotoxin was discovered in these fish and found in several other animals (e.g., blue-ringed octopus, rough-skinned newt,[3] and Naticidae[4]) it is actually produced by certain symbiotic bacteria, such as Pseudoalteromonas tetraodonis, certain species of Pseudomonas and Vibrio, as well as some others that reside within these animals."

"
Sources in nature

Tetrodotoxin has been isolated from widely differing animal species, including western newts of the genus Taricha (where it was formerly termed "tarichatoxin"), pufferfish, toads of the genus Atelopus, several species of blue-ringed octopodes of the genus Hapalochlaena (where it was called "maculotoxin"), several sea stars, certain angelfish, a polyclad flatworm, several species of Chaetognatha (arrow worms), several nemerteans (ribbonworms) and several species of xanthid crabs.[citation needed] The toxin is variously used as a defensive biotoxin to ward off predation, or as both a defensive and predatory venom (the octopodes, chaetognaths and ribbonworms). Tarichatoxin and maculotoxin were shown to be identical to tetrodotoxin in 1964 and 1978, respectively.[citation needed] The toxin is produced by bacteria within blue-ringed octopuses.[6] The most common bacteria associated with TTX production are Vibrio bacteria, with Vibrio alginolyticus being the most common species. Pufferfish,[7] chaetognaths,[8] and nemerteans[9] have been shown to contain Vibrio alginolyticus and TTX."

There are a lot of "citations needed" in that doc.

There is also another MAJOR difference. The shell foods we feed out puffers are cultured and tested for human compatibility. That is one main reason why they loose their toxicity in an aquarium environment.

J-P wrote:There are a lot of "citations needed" in that doc.

There is also another MAJOR difference. The shell foods we feed out puffers are cultured and tested for human compatibility. That is one main reason why they loose their toxicity in an aquarium environment.

Thats Plausable

Well, it's not like I use my pocket knife to cut my butter everyday or my aquarium gloves to eat my bacon everyday. I could hypothetically keep them. I, too, read that puffers acquire TTX.. Rather than permanently being born with it.

It's not like a really big deal, I was just standing at the garbage can with my $50 Gerber wondering if this is really needed.

Do I want to die someday in 10 hours of my puffer's toxin? No, absolutely not. That, enough, will make me throw it away.

I was wondering if the toxin had a half-life or anything known.

considering it is bacteria based, a good bleaching might be ok, but I'd ask Corvus, RTR, or Neale.

A new, sharp razor blade would have been the smarter choice.

jnheinz wrote:Well, it's not like I use my pocket knife to cut my butter everyday or my aquarium gloves to eat my bacon everyday. I could hypothetically keep them. I, too, read that puffers acquire TTX.. Rather than permanently being born with it.

It's not like a really big deal, I was just standing at the garbage can with my $50 Gerber wondering if this is really needed.

Do I want to die someday in 10 hours of my puffer's toxin? No, absolutely not. That, enough, will make me throw it away.

I was wondering if the toxin had a half-life or anything known.

To give you some idea of the Stability of TTX, if you have pufferfish meat contaminated with TTX no amount of cooking will degrade the TTX Molecule's chemical structure. Thus even with the most brutal of cooking methods of heating the Flesh / TTX to 100 C, the TTX poison would still be present in a stable enough form to kill you!
Hence why in japan you need to train for 7 years before your allowed to prepare Fugu Sushi for human consumption and thats not even cooked, otherwise every Fugu house would be cooking up Fugu to get rid of the poison. But you cant so its illegal to serve Fugu unless you have the license to prepare it.

It is possible you could degrade the TTX, if for e.g. you heated your knife with a blow torch to a temp of 300 C + but dont quote me on that as I dont know the stability of TTX at temperatures above those used in cooking!
TTX does not have a Halflife

J-P wrote:considering it is bacteria based, a good bleaching might be ok, but I'd ask Corvus, RTR, or Neale.

You could use bleach to kill the bacteria but if the TTX Poison is present on any surface a household bleaching agent may not be enough to degrade the TTX poison, but again dont quote me!

Although the official chemical name for Tetrodotoxin (TTX) is (4R,4aR,5R,6S,7S,8S,8aR,10S,12S)-2-azaniumylidene-4,6,8,12-tetrahydroxy-6-(hydroximethyl)-2,3,4,4a,5,6,7,8-octahydro-1H-8a,10-methano-5,7-(epoxymethanooxy)quinazolin-10-olate or anhydrotetrodotoxin, 4-epitetrodotoxin, tetrodonic acid. You could investigate the chemical properties of this Reagent to determine just how you can degrade TTX.