Parasitic Isopod

[Randyp79]

I ordered 3 flasher wrasses and a Copperband Butterfly from Bluezoo. All 4 fish were placed in QT. The Copperband didn't make it through the night and Bluezoo provided me with store credit. Unfortunately, one of the wrasses unexpectedly died today and when I pulled him out of the QT tank I noticed something in his mouth. I got a pair of tweezers and this is what I found!! Can someone ID this critter?

 

[Randyp79]

Found it...

Cymothoa exigua - Tongue eating Isopod!

 

[triggreef]

Good news it probably didn't kill your fish since it only replaces for fishes tongue when it takes over. Bad news, omg that thing is scary!

Copper copper copper for the rest of your group!

 

[triggreef]

Of course if the rest of your fish have them as their tongues, then what happens when you kill them?

Also fwiw, I really like blue zoo and having ordered from many many vendors, they do the best packing job of anyone. I would not hold this parasite against them, good of chance of getting it from anywhere else you ordered.

 

[Randyp79]

Looks like I was wrong on the species identification. However, it is still a tongue eating isopod. From my research it looks like there are over 200 species and most are specific to a particular species of fish. Also, most species will cause death to the fish and only one species, Cymothoa Exigua, takes the place of the tongue and allows the fish to survive. Looks like the only thing that kills this thing in QT would be insecticide Dylox, which is very hard on fish. I will probably end up losing the other 2 wrasses [emoji35]