Aquarium Corals of Anchorage Poison Humans, Dogs, and Cat

Here's Wikipedia's version (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palytoxin):

   According to an ancient Hawaiian legend, (Malo 1951) on 
   the island of Maui near the harbour of Hana there was a 
   village of fishermen haunted by a curse. Upon their 
   return from the sea one of the fishermen went missing. 
   One day, enraged by another loss, the fishermen 
   assaulted a hunchbacked hermit deemed culprit of the 
   town's misery. While ripping off the cloak from the 
   hermit the villagers were shocked because they uncovered 
   rows of sharp and triangular teeth within huge jaws. A 
   shark god had been caught. 

   It was clear that the missing villagers had been eaten 
   by the god on their journeys to the sea. The men
   mercilessly tore the shark god into pieces, burned him 
   and threw the ashes into a tide pool near the harbour of 
   Hana. Shortly after, a thick brown moss started to grow 
   on the walls of the tide pool causing instant death to 
   victims hit by spears smeared with the moss. Thus was 
   the evil of the demon. The moss growing in the cursed 
   tide pool became known as "limu-make-o-Hana" which 
   literally means "seaweed of death from Hana."[3] The 
   Hawaiians believed that an ill curse came over them 
   if they tried to collect the deadly seaweed.[9]

So, there's that.

In reality you usually have to go looking for trouble with this stuff in order to be affected by it. This article appears to be based on an unusually virulent sub-species that isn't commonly seen in the aquarium trade.

Is not so strange. The 'mist' is created by the aquarium pumps and aerators in fact. If the water had poisonous substances and the aquatium does not have a cover, those could travel by the air as aerosol. Is rare, but not paranormal.

The inverse works also easily. It is known that fishes can be poisoned and die by nicotine or burned oils smoke when aquariums are placed in smoking rooms or kitchens.

True. A related article: http://reefbuilders.com/2015/08/26/palytoxin-dangerous/

Haha, yeah. My bank account has been hit pretty hard with my saltwater tank, and I haven't even ventured into keeping corals yet.

I had a low tech reef tank so I know it's possible to keep one at very low cost. But because everything is so fragile you have to know what you are doing. That's why most serious reef keepers know about this coral. Those corals can make you blind if you are not careful.

I had a reef tank for awhile. It was definitely a mini one at only 20 gallons. The biggest cost of reef tanks is the lighting. I was able to do it on the cheap by building my own lighting setup and managed to save money, but there were still some corals I couldn't grow. The ones I could grow did quite well. I finally stopped doing it not because of the money, but the time required. A small tanks requires tons of daily checks and minor adjustments where a larger tank can more easily survive fluctuations because of the buffer of more water.

I've been in and out of this hobby over the last 20+ years.

The latest generation of technology that started ~5 years ago is simply amazing when compared to what we used to have.

Think home automation scaled down to a fish tank.

Remote monitoring and control, email/text alerts based on parameters, evaporation auto-top-offs, and LED lighting at a fraction of the cost of old metal halide or VHO fluorescent.

Plus the level of scientific knowledge and accurate affordable test kits now available to hobbyists really makes a huge difference.