Help! New tank - Isopod?

[LAB]

My tank has only been up for 1 1/2 months. I have Trochus, Margarita and Cerith snails. I also have one lawn mower blenny and I just added two tank raised False Clown babies on Saturday. I noticed an odd critter yesterday and didn't think anything of it because I have a multitude of Copepods crawling on the glass and thought it was just a new lifeform that was thriving. This afternoon I found several of my cerith snails piled in the corner and three of these things on top of one. i started noticing that several of the Ceriths have stripped looking areas on their shells. I was trying to find out what the nasty little bugger is and ran across info and pictures that led me to believe it might be a nasty isopod (parasite) trying to feed on my Certiths.

I pulled out seven of the 12 that I know to be in the tank and put them in a bowl. I only managed to capture one creature with the snails. I am very concerned about my fish. Please give your opinion and tell me what I should do if this is indeed a parasite?

 

[Teremei]

certainly does look like it, try to get a "macro" pic which is less fuzzy. But it does look to have the "2 big black eyes". .

 

[gtriamy]

oooooo... yea, that doesn't look like the good ones, but a better pic would clear things up

 

[Blown 346]

If it is a Isopod I would getall of them out before they have a chance to populate the tank. As I sure you know they will attach to fish and can kill them.

 

[bertoni]

Looks like a sphaeromatid isopod. If so, they are fine to have. Can it roll itself up into a ball?

This article might help:

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-05/rs/index.php

 

[LAB]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6691668#post6691668 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by bertoni
Looks like a sphaeromatid isopod. If so, they are fine to have. Can it roll itself up into a ball?

I have been able to pull two specimens from the tank. They look slightly different so I am guessing that one is male and the other is female. They remind me of a small beetle with the pinchers on each side. The body does appear to me to be the oval shape of the sphaeromatid type of Isopod in the link that you provided.
They aren't very large so I had a hard time telling if they were rolling into a ball, but my daughter swears that they did when she was looking at them. I just know that it took the darn things quite sometime to die even after being pulled from the tank and exposed to the air. I sure hope that is the type they are. I am very nervous about finding them as I don't want to loose my babies and I have two Pajama Cardinals that I am supposed to pick up this week.

Do you have any idea why they would have been ganging up on my Cerith? Also something that I didn't think about telling you was that I found these in full daylight with a HE on. I was thinking that I read somewhere that the parasitic type tend to be more nocturnal??

I appreciate your help! Thank you.

 

[bertoni]

Sphaeromatid isopods are scavengers, so they were probably just eating what they could find on the shells. Animals that eat snails usually go for the body, not the shell.

 

[capefear]

leave your tank alone

 

[LAB]

Thank you all I feel much better.