Amphipod and cirolanid woes

[Tired]

Again, I don't want to put a live fish in here to be attacked. I don't want some poor fish swimming around with this nasty little creature chewing on it. It's not so much that it would kill the fish in one go, as it would weaken the fish via anemia, presumably cause it notable pain, and would likely kill it eventually if not caught in time. And I'd be seriously worried about an inch-long fish with an isopod nearly half its mass. If I can trap the isopod out, I'd much rather do so. I know it'd happen in the wild, but this isn't the wild, and I may be able to solve the problem with just some traps. Plus, I gotta thin out the amphipods anyway, and I'm curious what else will wander into the traps. Maybe my Mysterious Clicking Noise. 

 

I haven't seen one jump on a fish, but I know they jump on human hands sometimes. There's a guy at my LFS who's seen them get hold, and they're quick about it. They have to be, or they might wake up their food and get grabbed. Kinda like lampreys. 

 

Cleaner shrimp are maybe worth a shot, and I wonder if they'd go at my amphipods even, but I don't want to risk my zoanthids. I think they wouldn't do much to a decent-sized isopod, anyway. 

 

Trapping efforts are going on hold for now, unfortunately. I'm having surgery to remove some adhesions from around my abdominal organs, and part of that means that I have to spend the 6th on an all-liquid diet for surgery on the 7th. Not sure after that when I'll be back to catching things. The only aquarium-related goal I have for tomorrow is to get everything settled so I can ignore it for a few days. 

 

The anemone isn't doing well. It scrunched up earlier today (last few hours) and is staying badly scrunched and deflated. I almost wonder- maybe something got into the hole in it and is in there messing around. Or maybe it's just going to be pissed off for the next few hours because anemones do that sometimes.

[A.m.P]

I've heard of and seen examples of pods go parasitic and eat corals, usually mushrooms or zoa's, sometimes sps. There are thousands of species and some are bigger and more carnivorous than others, contrary to popular-belief they don't much care for simply starving out and disappearing after overpopulating either.

I've also heard that coral banded shrimp sometimes hunt amphipods, the yellow and blue stay smaller than skunk cleaners to boot but I have no first-hand experience with them.

[Tired]

I've been eyeing a blue coral banded shrimp! May have to go for one. They do have large enough claws that I expect they'd go after something eventually, though evidently they're very docile. I know a guy who kept one with a flaming prawn goby and an eviota goby, and I rather think that a shrimp which won't hurt those won't hurt much that you'd keep on purpose. Amphipods are another (snack-sized) matter, though.

 

That's good to know about, thanks. Worth consideration. 

[Tamberav]

My blue one attacked a blue stripe pipefish but left other fish alone. My guess is if it's small enough fish it may be on the menu depending on the individual shrimp.

[Seadragon]

@Tired Where did the Amphipods and the Cirolanid originally come from?  A live rock?

 

I did like the solution with the narrow necked bottle and the stinky shrimp.

[Wingy]

42 minutes ago, Amphrites said:

I've heard of and seen examples of pods go parasitic and eat corals, usually mushrooms or zoa's, sometimes sps. There are thousands of species and some are bigger and more carnivorous than others, contrary to popular-belief they don't much care for simply starving out and disappearing after overpopulating either.

I've also heard that coral banded shrimp sometimes hunt amphipods, the yellow and blue stay smaller than skunk cleaners to boot but I have no first-hand experience with them.

You are correct.  I had some large pods go after one of my zoa's.  I resorted to a combination of a Lugols dip for the rocks and actively hunting them with a bamboo skewer or chop stick.  I still have to hunt to keep the population down but I recently bought an acan and a favia which might help.  

[Tired]

They came in on live rock, yeah. The amphipods look like the "regular" kind of amphipods- I think the main issue is just that I have no predator. I took some to my LFS yesterday in some macro I wanted to get rid of, and the guy commented on how bold the pods were, even in the transport bag. Out and about and scooting around, as soon as things had sat still for about 5 minutes. 

The ciriolanid is probably from some live rock I got that has lots of other critters on it. Caribbean rock, I think? It's from my LFS, covered in macros and starlet corals and fun things. They said they've seen a couple of cirolanids in peoples' tanks- I think it's just a hazard of live rock. Maybe they're uncommon because they starve during the curing process a lot of the time, or maybe they just aren't very common across their range, or maybe they just don't often hide in the live rock that gets collected anyway. 

They also had a guy who brought in a gorgeous eunicid worm. Dark-colored with white speckles all down its length, maybe a good 6" long. He'd brought it in as a size comparison so he could buy one of those hang-on breeder boxes and keep it in there, and wanted to be sure it wouldn't escape. 

 

Live rock has cool stuff on it. Sometimes that cool stuff bites. 

 

Huh, do acans do anything about amphipods? I've got a couple acan lord frags. I'd love if they'd eat these for me.

[Wingy]

I don't  know if the Acans will help thin the population or not.  They feed at night and have sweepers out so maybe.   I have positioned the Acan to act as a security guard for the harassed zoa but it could take a few weeks to know if it worked.  This zoa has always been a drama queen and closes up for weeks if you so much as look at it wrong so it is hard to tell sometimes

 

Two things I noticed about these big pods is that they don't or maybe can't  climb the glass and that they don't  care for the high flow areas.  If yours behave similarly maybe you could use that knowledge to direct them into an area for capture.  Like me, this is a problem that you will always have so finding ways to reduce the population or protect harassed corals is important.  

[mcarroll]

Nothing has much of a chance to starve to death in the ocean – everything gets eaten first.

[DSA65PRO]

When I want to Glue Mismatched Plastics together, I get out the Hot Glue Gun. A quick wash under the faucet, and it’s ready for the tank. Dottybacks will eat Amphipods, and will take pellet foods when the population is low, rather than starving. 

[Tired]

Dottybacks really shouldn't be in pico tanks. And that still doesn't do anything about the isopod. 

 

Hot glue works pretty well for a bit, but its longevity over time leaves something to be desired. I got the superglue gel to work, anyway.

[mcarroll]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesograzer#Mesograzers_in_Crustaceans

 

How sure are you of the type of Isopod you have?  Seems like at least some reputable folks consider them to be herbivorous grazers.....a "meso-" sized grazer, to be specific.  

 

Check out https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=isopod+mesograzers

 

Maybe you can find a picture of yours among the available PDF's?

[Tired]

I only saw it briefly, not well enough to compare to pictures. It definitely had large eyes, though, and those mostly seem to be bad news. I suppose I can't say for certain that it's a cirolanid, but it looked enough like one that I'm concerned. 

 

Curiously, the anemone seems to be sorting itself out. The cup it was in sank, and it crawled out and attached to a rock where I can't remove it. It stayed badly scrunched for another day or so, but is now opening fairly well. I think it finally realized that the amphipods aren't hurting it, and now that it's not all made up of enticing folds, fewer amphipods (but not 0) are on it. I'm still going to be trying to thin the amphipods out, though, they're eating my macros. 

 

I will hopefully be able to get back to various anti-critter attempts in the next few days, and will be focusing on trying to get that isopod. If I can trap it out, I can add a fish to eat the amphipods. I figure either an antenna goby or a geen clown goby will make a decent dent in the pods.