I Caught The Little @#%@!!!!!

i dont know if you guys have been keeping up with my lastest nano drama so heres the story

~~~>http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/showthread...&threadid=28705

I was almost positive of what i had seen but didnt even know what an isopod was b4 i spotted it. after matching pictures i knew i HAD to take action.

I did not like the fact that i was using my next fish as an experiment so i started to brainstorm alternative solutions.

I figured that if it was an isopod then it was HUNGRY because i have had this LR in a cycle bucket for a month or so, and it was in a fishless pool at the LFS so it couldnt have eaten anything living for a while.

i volunteered a snail from my main tank and put it on the peice of LR i saw the isopod run towards.

About 7 hours later i saw the snail laying on its back in the sand...

i picked it up on attached to its shell was the SOB.

Snail is alive...but the isopods future doesnt look as promising~

i took him out, put the snail back in, and heres some pics....

side

top

back

now the problem is..what the hell now?

Is there most likely more??

i dont know anything about fish lice! Its def. a Cirolanid Isopod though~

What should i do?

I guess the only way to know is to bait it with another snail.

As for that guy, I'd take the eraser end of a pencil and erase it from existance.

-Justin

upside down~

Id use that dime and squash the %(*#&!

I read that the parasitic Isopods can only eat fish (unclear whether aquarium food made of fish qualifies).

Those pictures are pretty good.

I'd recommend you post them on Dr Ron's forum at reefcentral.com and see what he thinks they are...

wow congrats!!!!

that thing is sooo nasty!

and I agree with artarmon that I thought these parastic isopods only attack fish, and not snails.

well...last night i took a flashlight to the tank and saw one of the little suckers sitting in the sand. I TRIED to suck him up with the turkey bas. but his butt got stuck b/c he was so fat and clogged the damn thing so he couldnt go farther in so it got away.

Im completely blown....this rock is by far the nicest piece of rock ive seen....

Now i really dont know what to do, theres no way telling how many are in it :*(

could i maybe take dead fish and put in it there as bait???

humphhhhh~

Freshwater dip your rock.

how much will survive on the rock? theres so many feather dusters and sponges and algaes and polyps/ how long should i dip it for? whats bad is that i wont even know if i got them all even after the FD.....

Based on my experience (paranoia vs reality), I'd highly recommend you stick a fish in there.

If there are parasitic Isopods there, you've lost 1 fish.

Alternatively you start killing rocks (and the chance of ALL the Isopods being on that one rock is probably pretty slim).

Best case scenario, fish lives and this whole episode is behind you...

well in the tank with the isopods, there is 5 rocks. Two of them are completely solid coral skeletons..i just liked the branchy shapes of them..and then the other one is a piece of TBS that is COVERED in life. there is no way that an isopod could be in the other two unless he was on the outside.

Im thinking about dipping the TBS Rock...

and then putting in a fish

it ####ed me off when this morning i found a malt of an isopod!!

I was also thinking about taking a dead fish from the LFS and putting it in there and seeing if they woud all attach to it???

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

I was looking at my tank this past Saturday morning, just as the lights came on. When the light flicked on, it startled something that looked exactly like the picture with the dime. It quickly swam (sidways) into the vent that leads to the back area of my Nanocube.

I was coming here today to figure out what it is.

#$%&^*())_(&$%#$@#

Do you have fish in your aquarium Hwarang??

i wish they had Isopod Exit...

even tho flatworm exit didnt get rid of my flats either~ =P

the snail bait idea definitely isnt working. When i caught the first one, he was attached to its shell. Im thinking that was pure luck

so now im still thinking about the dead fish idea. I dont know if they would prey on dead fish though..

and its impossible to find good info on them, and the pics i took are one of the only ones i can find on this kind!

Yeah I have two yellow clown gobies. Do they attach and stay on until the fish is dead or do they prey a little here and there?

two words: sacrificial damsel.... they're pretty tough, so they might even survive an attack.

You could probabaly get a donor damsel from someone on this board.

Hwa- im crossing my fingers for your poor gobies! ive heard stories about little ones riding on a fish for a week and then it finally died

so here's the question.....

if i put a damsel in the tank...will all of the existing isopods attach?? or would it be a one at a time kinda thing?

I dont want to keep putting in damsels until they stop getting attacked~

If they attach until the fish is dead, that means that if i put in a fish thats already dead, no catching the isopod?? If they keep eating it until the fish is bone, then there IS HOPE!

sh*tty part is, ive been reading and reading, and cant find mush info, especially if they consume the fish after they kill it

I found one in my nano, it looks like it has a pair of scissors coming out of its butt though. should i seek and destroy?

I was just about to add the Royal Gramma i just bought too!

Should i go and get a sacrificial damsel as well?

hmmm well my little gobies are unaffected as of now.

*crosses fingers too*

if its what i posted pictures of, DESTROY!!!

i found this on them...

In many cases, these infestations appear to be the result of a pregnant female that enters the aquarium and then drops her brood of 10 to 30 young, all of which are immediately hungry for a nice meal of fish blood. A hobbyist will see the alarming sight of one or more fish with from one to twenty blood-sucking parasites on it. Often the isopods are nocturnal, and unless the aquarist is alert, they may not notice the parasites, as the bugs drop off the fish shortly after the lights go on and find shelter in the rocks. Prolonged exposure to such densities of blood suckers WILL kill fish.

The only way to rid an aquarium of these animals is to catch them all, which although tedious, is possible. Generally, this involves using a sacrificial fish, usually something easy to catch and moderately large. A yellow tang is a good choice for this because the fish's color pattern allows easy determination of the presence of the parasite. The other fish in the tank are collected and removed to a quarantine tank, and the "bait" fish is introduced. This fish is checked periodically and, if the parasites are seen on it, it is netted and removed to a flat surface where it may be immobilized with a wet paper towel. The parasite is removed with a pair of tweezers or forceps. The fish is then returned to the tank, and the procedure repeated. Often the parasites are nocturnal; consequently, the fish will have to be examined before the lights come on. The aquarium is probably free of the parasites if none are seen on the fish for a month or so after the last one has been collected.

The bug may be disposed of. Carefully!!! I had a student who was holding a three centimeter cirolanid that we had just collected in her clenched hand. The bug cut through the flesh of her palm, dug in, and started to eat HER. Her response was rather impressive. So was the tenacity of the isopod, it was HARD to remove it.

AND i found this sentence about cirolanids too!

"Some years ago there were several large sharks that washed ashore in Florida. Examination showed that they were all killed by cirolanids that had burrowed into the shark and eaten their hearts."

sorry to all the animal activists~ but damsel it is

wowzers.

i'll be peering at my 2 little gobies for a few minutes every morning for a month or two, i guess!