Attack of the isopods!!!!

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courterbobby

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Ok so here I am at 3:30 in the morning..... very very tired. Already pulled one isopod off of my black clowns...... now two more on one and one on the other! Gotta pull them again and give another fresh water dip..... tonight..... they are very stressed and trying with all their might to get them off but they just cant shake em...... AHHHHHHHH
 
OMG!!! I do not know what to do..... they have obviously breed in my aquarium and I have been smashing them with my fingers everywhere!!!! There are sooo many and right now they are only attacking the clownfish.... As soon as I get them all off and put em back in I find another one attached! I really have my hands full and I do not know what to do at this point. Any help is appreciated guys.
 
wow ok so just did some more research and my aquarium is gonna look grim for the next couple of months..... now I have to remove all my fish and get the buggers off them, then house them in another tank till the current isopods die of starvation..... or I could nuke all my lr and sand, but that is not an option bc of the money I have in it. at least 1000 dollars worth of lr
 
relax.........breath in, hold it............breath out...........
again breath in........hold............breath out............
ok, now, call a lfs like jenn at imagine ocean in the morning, see if she has any ideas on this.
 
Hmmm.... not sure here... I've read about parasitic isopods, but have never had to deal with them (knock on wood).

Seems to me that quarantine of the fish and leaving the DT fallow until the isopods die off is the most logical thing to do. :(

Jenn
 
One of the big drawbacks with the Interceptor treatment for redbugs is that it can kill inverts; what about using that to kill pods?
 
Here is a pretty good article regarding parasitic isopods.
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-05/rs/index.php">http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-05/rs/index.php</a>

the last paragraph gives you your options

If you notice one of these animals in your tank, and it leaves the fish, there is almost nothing that may be done to catch it. They are very fast and quite capable of avoiding a net. And if it is a pregnant female (and remember, all female isopods have brood pouches), and the brood hatches, you have [B]REAL[/B] problems. There are only three courses of action in this situation; and I truly am not jesting about these responses. The first is to remove all the fish from the tank and wait the two or three months until you are certain that all the isopods have died from starvation. The second solution is to effectively nuke the tank. Remove all live rock and discard it as the isopods may hide in it and, as some of the isopods bury in the sand, you should also remove and discard the sand.
You may, of course, take the third option and do nothing. The most likely outcome in this situation will be that the isopods will kill your fish one by one. These isopods are masterfully designed predators. Hope fervently that you never have to deal with them.
 
Do you have any pictures of these isopods. Most of the ones I have ever seen are fairly large.

Thanks,
Tim
 
I had these before in Miami. Cleaner shrimp and shark nose gobies as well as a 6 line in the tank will help a ton! Yes, they will still be in the tank, but populations will be kept under control and fish will be picked clean by the little helpers.
 
giantisopods_doritos1.jpg
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These guys are the reason I built my Dorito reactor..
 
Smallblock;511368 wrote: LOL that was so unexpected lmao
Click to expand...

no i was expecting it as i was goin down the thread... we had a thread about isopods once before with the same pic that followed suit lol
 
Close..

I posted a few pictures of crazy isopods..

Can't remember the name of the thread though.. I think I called it

"Any help with an I.d" or something like that..
 
Nuke um all let god sort it out. What's so special about the rock n e ways can't you just put it back n after a couple of days of it sitting outside?? Scrub it off good clean it n shove it n a kiddy pool or something for a couple months to cure. Ta da presto u still have rock. Sure time sucksbut hay.
 
A nice boiling water or bleach soak ought to kill them. Bleach is probably easier - you can do that in a kiddie pool or a rubbermaid to do large quantities at a time, whereas you can only boil as much sand or rock as will fit in your largest stock pot at any given time! I know these suckers are tough, but can they survive a bleach bath?

When you put the sand/rock back in your tank, dose heavily with Prime, then go through the cycling process again because all your good bacteria will be as dead as the pests.

I dunno what to tell you about your currently-affected fish, though...
 
Sorry for the wait guys, for some reason the email notices have not been sent to my email to let me know if the replys.
I have identified them as Cirolanid Isopods. I have no idea if they are scavenge type, but deff the parasitic as they are attaching my fish.
This fish that were the concern that night were my black clowns. One was so stressed that it actually turned orange. Long story short, I have put them in my 30g system that has been fishless for 2 months from a prior disease outbreak. I do know there are no iso's in that tank. They are doing great now and are starting to heal up.

When they first started attacking them I did FW dips to remove them, but I did have to manually pick one off with tweasers(I hated doing that but had to be done). Now the Display tank with the infestation still has 3 fish in it. A Regal, Sailfin, and a Yellow tang. Last night the Sailfin was attacked, but nothing I could do bc I could not catch em. They fled this morning when the halides came on.

Also, last night I decided to bait a trap (inverted coke bottle) with a piece of silverside..... no luck.
I have been reading about Interceptor to kill them off. Quite frankly I am very very apt to using this method. Kill the b@sterds within a week. Of course the pods will be killed also. I would have to remove all the CUC(I have a BIG CUC), which is a downside to this treatment, but im willing to do it to save my fishies. The only disagreement I am facing is my partner does not wanna kill off all the other pods. I guess I have to convince him that when the iso problem is done, we are merging our large display with the small display which will replenish the pods.
I have not tried this method yet because I do not have any Interceptor, nor do I know the right dosage it would take yet, and because of my partner.
I do not have any pics at this time, but will try to snap some tonight when the lights go out.
Thanks for all the help. All suggestions are welcome!
 
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