Careful with shrimps, parasites

DRC Archive General Saltwater Discussion
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I saw something recently I have never noticed in the past. Not that I really have examined shrimp much in the past, but I noticed these guys in an LFS in the past week:

Using the black lines I’m trying to point out the white bulge in the shrimp. That swelling is actually part of a parasitic isopod. While it is close to impossible for these shrimp to infect other shrimp in captivity due to the lack of “an intermediate host not found in captivity”(Shimek), it will likely kill the host shrimp. Here is another rough image from my cell phone:

I kind of thought it was a neat find, but not neat enough for me to purchase a shrimp that will eventually die a slow and painful death.

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But you could make it’s last days more comfortable and pleasant. full of treats to eat and fish to play with.

Have you still got the big isopod you picked out of your fish?

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interesting i was wondering WTH was with a few of my pepermints…

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Jon,

Can these isopods transfer to fish?

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Jon had one a hlaf inch long or bigger in one of his fish gills.

He caught it when it swam loose. it was impressive.

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here is some info on them and some intense pics…
http://www.vetcare.gr/Pathogenic_isopoda.htm

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Hey sorry, I swore I typed a lengthy response to this, but I must have never sent it. The tumor ispods Epicaridae species do not infect bony fishes. You don’t have to worry about them transferring to other animals in the aquarium according to everything I have read.

As Ken mentioned, I have more experience with Cirolanid ispods then I care to have had. Don’t get me wrong it would have been kind of neat just to experience seeing them on a fish in an LFS or see them out in the wild, but I didn’t care to have found one on a fish I loved.(And spent well over $100 on) I’ll find the old threads and pics at some point to link. The video was the crazy part. You could see the invert moving inside of the fish’s gill.

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I realize what takes away from that video is that this fish is not a typical fish and it makes it hard for people to picture what it was like to see this parasite in person. Here are some images of the fish.

Poor Segar. He lived through the parasite ordeal and ended up meeting his demise when the heater in his tank broke. :frowning: Many of my tanks now have multiple heaters.

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I saw it after he caught it in a jar of water. it was like a half inch long grub worm or something. dang thing lived for another week or two in the jar of water.

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Pretty sure it was actually months it lived in a tiny little jar.
4/17 I posted “IT CAME OUT!!!”
5/16 I posted that I still had it and I am pretty sure I had it a month later.

I’m glad I didn’t resort to adjusting the water chemistry to see if the fish could live through more then the invert as I am sure I would have lost the fish first. These things are like bullet proof.