What Ate my Blue Leg Hermits?

KingLucy1997

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I literally got another predatory isopod infection in by I upgraded 10 gallon tank. I sterilized and removed everything so it has to be from my supplier. Does buying from brick and mortar shops and closely examining what you purchase help reduce the incidence of these event occurring. Now that I can see them better come suprised how varied their morph opposites are and if they are multiple species. There’s got to be something out there that eats these things. If there a less dangerous isopod I could dual the infesting ones with and just keep adding more until the are outcompetes in resources and battery.
 

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KingLucy1997

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I last hermit crab is fighting like it’s 300, and has killed an eaten the smaller parasitic ones. I’ll do my best to keep it alive until I can find it reinforcements. I bet a gorilla grab or emerald crab could eat these isopods.
 

KingLucy1997

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Just a guess, but what you’re describing could have been some kind of predatory isopod. They look weird and some of them have very bizarre ambush methods.

I have no idea what that thing is in your freshwater photos are though.
I have done my research and found the following scientific paper from 2019 describing several new hermit crab isopod parasites that look like the ones I found in my tank. Especially figure 2 (https://lkcnhm.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/app/uploads/2018/11/RBZ-2019-0008.pdf). It explains the crab looking appendages of a newly discovered species with multiple subtypes (which is why I probably thought the things were shape shifting). I got a second tank, new hermit crabs, new materials, no way anything from the previous tanks could have touched anything, and I got another parasitic isopod infection. I have to kind of disagree that they are obligate parasites. It also was infested with regular old predatory, or maybe even beneficial isopods that actually looked like isopods but were hard to see because there are well hidden. I am guessing the first tank may have been infested with a single species and the second tank was infected with multiple species of isopod because they are alive and scavenging.
I literally performed surgery on my surviving hermit crab, which gave me more insights into the life cycle of at least some types of parasitic isopod, unless there were multiple parasites infecting him. The classic black head with bulbus eyes was my first target. There were either multiple of the isopods or the isopod has multiple heads, because the heads were coming out of parts of the shell even and at the shell opening at the same time. Luckily this hermit crab doesn't inhabit the rear most portion of the conical shell he was in, so I was able to break open the holes already created weakened parts to pull out/kill some of the isopod. The solution ended up being make enough holed in the shell when the isopod showed its face attack the head with tweezers while the hermit ejected from his shell (I don't think he could do this while the isopod was alive and healthy) so the hermit crab would eject from his shell.
At this point the adult isopod was dead, but either its larvae or another species was attached to the body. There were little anemone looking projections and the looked like they developed from free swimming flukes (which I know because I could see, and I was able to remove these and these brine shrimp like larvae capable of free swimming which may be the larval form of the parasitic isopod but thats a total guess because I added brine shrimp to the tank the day before day the infection became noticeable. I also removed all the red eggs, which were the same color as the little brine shrimp looking parasites that I also saw that would immediately try to attach/burrow into the hermit crab. There was another strange parasite in this original tank that somehow made it to my intermediary bucket I was using to keep the last hermit crab after noticing the infection that was chasing the hermit crab around the tank and stabbed it with a proboscis before I could stop it.
Miraculously, The hermit crab is still alive a day later and it appears to have developed some opportunistic fungal infections at the attachment points of the parasites and he still has some small parasitic looking projections that are impossible to eradicate completely. I plan to give him a little quarantine home for the remainder of his life and a nice little shell. What are some medicine safe for flukes and fungal infections? I know I can't use isopod killing medicines because that would kill my crab too because they are both chitinous. If I see another parasitic isopod grow on him I don't want him to go through the trauma of surgery a second time so what would be the most human way to euthanize him? He is still strong now, I think I could live pain free for at least a few months if I got him the right medicine.
Also, getting two tank destroying parasitic isopod infections in 2 weeks has turned me off saltwater. I'll be converting my 10 gallon into a betta tank and I found a 40 gal on sale that I will use when I feel like giving saltwater another shot.
TLDR: I'm not hallucinating, there are countless undescribed species of parasitic isopods and the incidence of them in aqauriums has spiked sharply. Highly recommended quarantining everything living thing you put into your tank.
 

KingLucy1997

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oh yeah theses parasitic isopods infect snails and probably all gastropods just fine too. The scientific paper got the obligate parasites of hermit crabs wrong. These things aren't specialists, they are generalists of gastropods. Ive seen it with my own eyes.
 

KingLucy1997

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And even in the jungle canopy
I could totally see that. When I was trying to kill them, they seemed unaffected by hot water, soap, and 3% hydrogen peroxide, hypochlorite (bleach) based drain cleaner for PVC piping, and acetic acid cleaners. I resorted to high concentration bleach hypochlorites in combination with a pyrethrin based Raid products (house and garden + cricket and roach), and a proprietary drain cleaner and that seems too kill them if you fill your sink up and let them soak in the pot of chemicals. I avoided the temptation of mixing a strong acid, like my pH up or barkeepers friend, with the bleach hypochlorite because I didn't want to suffocate myself on the fumes created by this mixture.
They literally infected a couple of my soap sponges. You know the ones with the bristles and a self dispensing container for soap above? There is a small rubber piece that you press down on to dispense soap. I noticed a little spike coming out of that rubber part, so I cut into it, expecting a tiny one to have burrowed into the rubber. When i opened it, there was an entire transluscent isopod, or 2, living within the soap filled dispenser. There were another 2 living in my other identical cleaning item. Not only that, but they burrowed into the bristles of a plastic billow pad like thing and a sponge. Each time I tried to kill them I would see them in the drain catcher trying to escape the little holes in it. They seem to be weak to desiccation because when they weren't wet they'd loose their ability to change shape and just kind of be a blob, while others appeared to have an actual transparent exoskeleton. I have no idea if these were different species or not. The ones without the exoskeleton seemed to loose the ability to move without being wet, but the transluscent ones that had a more definite shape and probably could survive without water or at least move a little on land. Another creepy thing was watching a tiny little red piece of flesh climbing up the side of my sink using little stubby arms after my first barrage of chemicals.
Update on the hermit crab I did surgery on to remove the parasites - it was all for naught. There was a lesion on his abdomen that I knew I couldn't remove without killing him and didn't exactly know what it was that the hermit seemed especially bothered by. I had him in a tiny plastic tupperwear container with a bunch of calcium supplement for land hermit crabs. This was after the surgery. He seemed to be improving, he was eating and active, and the post surgery infections had healed. He seemed back to normal. So I got him a 2.5 gal quarantine tank with some stringy algae plant and live aragonite substrate, gave him some dried seaweed to eat in the tank, and several shells to pick from, and kept the main water parameters constant from his tiny container to his actual new tank with a little filter and an aerator. I left for 4 hours and when I came back the entire tank was infested with the creatures and it looked like they had burst out of his abdomen. The creatures were using the pieces of dried seaweed like little rafts, but their locomotion was very slow. They also seemed to have infected/assimilated part of the stringy algae plant like they did with some of the moss that was in my old freshwater tank I took pictures of earlier. Some were burrowing in the substrate, some with proboscis like extensions sticking out that I had noticed in my last tank but thought they were just part of the substrate (the tank the hermit came from had a crushed coral substrate, and the more liquidy of the creatures would inhabit the snail shells in the crushed coral and the more solid would burrow and do the proboscis thing. One of the things on the seaweed raft was slowly making its way to the hermit's carcass and looked like he was starting to eat/assimilate it. If you read the 2019 paper I mentioned in a previous reply, it looks as if the kelp raft thing has developed one of those claws you can see in Figure 2 of the referenced paper and the crabs flesh is gone but the legs are still there and the seaweed is kind of like and extension of the hermit remains that I am guessing the creature finds 'useful'. I'll attach a picture of this. Also some of the shells in the tank are starting to look a little too... mouth like.. I am guessing they have inhabited all of the shells in the tank as well and are probably waiting to ambush.
I think these creatures are intelligent. I don't think that the bursting out of the abdomen was random. I think that the creature sensed that it was in a more desirable habitat and decided to burst out then. These creatures are pink to translucent in color, where as the ones I removed from the hermit while it was alive were black in color. Are they different species or did the original parasite just lay eggs inside the hermit in addition to physically inhabiting it while it was alive? I think I could potentially have multiple novel species of predatory isopods or something else entirely contained within by now duct taped sealed shut tanks. Would there be any researcher out there who would be willing to take these live samples off my hands and study their behavior, and possibly identify parasites that are not currently described by science? Or someone who works in the R&D department for an aquarium supply company to develop some sort of chemical that can specifically target these isopod like and liquidy parasites without killing the rest of the tank? This could be a potentially lucrative venture because apparently the rates of these predatory isopod infections are on the rise. I don't think it was pure bad luck that I got 2 shipments from 2 separate distributors that had the same types of parasites in them. These things are practically invincible and reproduce incredibly fast, so if they have entered the supply chain I don't think it will be long until this parasite becomes common within the hobby. I was too scared to even remove the temperature probe and air line, I just cut those off at the exit point, shoved them into the tank and sealed the exits. The cleaning supplies that got infected I put in jars or tupperwear and duct taped the tops. can't see the creatures anymore, but when it comes to these things I've learned not to assume just because you don't see them anymore they aren't still there. Last thing, I used some type of anti-fluke/parasite medication on the water after I first put the hermit in the new tank, and clearly that has no effect. I would also doubt the effectiveness of current anti-isopod treatments currently on the market because some of these guys don't seem to bother with an exoskeleton.
 

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KingLucy1997

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The arthropod specific drugs in the Raid products I used were Imiprothrin,
Actually I’ve been going back through my research and I remember there was some information about something like this sound down in central America in 1987. It’s able to switch from freshwater to salt water
Can you please provide any of this research?
 

Staghorn

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The arthropod specific drugs in the Raid products I used were Imiprothrin,

Can you please provide any of this research?
It’s strange but the papers I cited seem to have been removed from the database. ??? Did you let then “dip cocktail” water from your sink drain into the sewer? I hope to god none of these things made it into the sewer system as they could pose a great threat to our American sewer crocodile population.
 

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Glad you were able to find out what they were! Had a similar experience when I found about oenone fulgida worms cause I lost two decent size mantises to them :eek:
 

KingLucy1997

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Just to report, both times I recieved this parasite they were crustaceans sourced out of Florida reefs and aquaculture. The two companies that I received the parasites are RUSALTY and Aquarium Depot. Both companies have removed my reviews of their products from their websites. I would recommend specifically avoiding these two dishonest companies, and anything sourced out of Florida if you want to avoid my tank's fate.
 

KingLucy1997

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Actually I’ve been going back through my research and I remember there was some information about something like this sound down in central America in 1987. It’s able to switch from freshwater to salt water
Very clever I finally got your joke :rolleyes:. Year predator was released in the same region of the world the movie takes place in.
 

KingLucy1997

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Have done further research, and found that they behavior of my soft bodied parasites is most similar to the behavior of these flatworms: https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-this-worm-can-make-itself-virtually-invisible-1562361160 except that instead of eating and assimilating corals, they do the prefer crustaceans, snails, and macro algae. I have seen them clearly incorporate the the chloroplasts of macro algae into their tentacles and the exoskeletons of hermit crabs in addition to being able to inhabit snail shells. They must be co-evolving within aquaculture and through the aquarium hobby because that is the only way I could explain how incredibly resistant they are to chemicals commonly used to clean aquariums. Dipping would be absolutely ineffective against my particular strains of flatworms. I expect that the hard bodied creatures are predatory isopods that have been coevolving in aquaculture alongside these flatworms.
I will never know what species these are because the University of Auburn want to charge me $500 bucks for an ID of the species alone, not even including shipping and handling and my own labor to get these samples for them. I was interested in donating these samples to simply try and stop a potential outbreak, but the lab is acting like I have the resources of a governmental agency or a aquarium company. I've already lost an incredible amount of money dealing with these things, and I have no interest in losing any more to an academic institution that might end up getting grant money and prestige from publishing a paper that I wouldn't see a cent from or even be acknowledged in. I am already running on loan money from my absurdly expensive pharmacy school program, and this whole investment in this hobby was a foolish financial decision for someone in my position in the first place and I have no interest in getting an official ID of this species for further investment of time and money that will only benefit that same higher education institutions that have been exploiting me for financial gain for my entire adult life. I have seen what it is and what it can do. I will be destroying all of these parasites with muriatic acid this time.
 

KingLucy1997

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Posted on ResearchGate forum and just got a response from a scientist guessing what species these parasites were that most closely matches what was in my old tank. Faciola gigantica, Fasciola hepatica, or some sort of related parasitic flatworm seems to be the most likely candidate. Apparently these things can cause tropical fasciolosis if you eat them. They have several intermediate larval stages of various forms that look similar to what I saw and normally use various species of freshwater snail and intermediary hosts before infecting cattle, sheep, goats, and other similar types of large mammals and birds in their final life stage. Experiments have shown they can adapt to other species of intermediate host snail. They are adapted to surviving in acidic mammalian digestive systems, which could explain how I saw them survive in my soap dispenser and salt water aquarium. Terrifying little creeps.
 

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I have two Clown Fish, Neon Dotty Back, Flameback Angel, and Four Green Chromis. Also an Emerald Crab, Three Nassarius Snails, Cleaner Shrimp, and Six Bubble-tip Anemones. Noticed all six of my Hermits are gone. Iodine level is fine.
Dottybacks are known to eat ornamental inverts, but sometimes angels can also.
 

Aboynamedsous2

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I have two Clown Fish, Neon Dotty Back, Flameback Angel, and Four Green Chromis. Also an Emerald Crab, Three Nassarius Snails, Cleaner Shrimp, and Six Bubble-tip Anemones. Noticed all six of my Hermits are gone. Iodine level is fine.
Didn’t realize how old this thread is lol
 
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