RacerX
03-23-2005, 07:02 PM
The original thread appears to be gone, so here is a repost/compilation of my ciroland problem, with pics.
First, thanks to those who offered support/encouragement/tips.
Over a several month battle, I ended up with 45 of these little !@#$@*)#.
They can come in on Live Rock, or Unquarantined fish. I would highly recommend a QT tank of some kind for all new arrivals. Not only to monitor health, but to inspect for bugs.
Also following the below methods of dipping new rock should also help. One thing to remember, if you have corals though, is even though you follow the above for fish and rock, since some corals come attached to rock, there’s always a chance of hitchhikers in it, since you can’t just dip the rock without damaging the coral.
In the end, I gutted my tank threw out my sand, and put in new rock and sand. There is not a lot of info on these things out there, so a lot of it was trial and error. I will briefly describe what I did to start the tank in the beginning, how I found the first one, and what I did to battle them. I will then list what didn’t work, and what sort of worked. The bottom line with these, is anything you would do to kill them directly in a tank will also damage/kill anything thing else around them, short of waiting 2-12 months in hopes they starved in a tank with no fish. Some of the old rock I could have boiled, but it would no longer be “live rock”. It would be dead base rock. That may work out for some, but for myself, I like the setup of my new rock, without adding more.
Here’s a copy of part of the original post.
I believe it came in on my rock. it is more common on rock from florida, but all my rock is from the pacific. 3 months ago i bought some fiji premium show rock. big pieces. 3 weeks ago i ordered some lalo rock to add to the tank. at that time i took out my fiji and broke it into some smaller pieces to rework the tank. about a week later i started adding the lalo after curing it outside the tank. 4 days after the last pieces were added i found the first one on a maroon clown. since then the battle has begun. it could have been the lalo, but it could also have been the fiji that i broke open. they may have been active right after reworking the fiji and i didn't notice. i only knew about them from reading an article in the marine fish and reef annual edition. i know there is one more at least because i caught a glimpse of it yesterday..
Either way, at this point the battle was beginning. The most effective method was capture the fish, pick off the bug, and put him back. I did this MANY times, which I’m sure stressed the fish, but they never got sick, and always acted fine. (except when they saw the net coming).
With several bugs attached, the fish would act fine, but you could see where fins were chewed through, when the bugs finished eating for the day.
As time progressed, it was harder and harder to find/see these bugs. The first one was out in the morning with the lights on, but most of them wouldn’t come out until around 2:00 am and would drop off the fish by around 6-7:00 am. These things swim FAST too. The odds of catching one off a fish is pretty nill. I put several of these bugs in a separate container for study/experimentation. They are adept at “playing dead”, but will bolt in a moments notice. Here’s another quote.
…extreme heat and cold don't seem to affect them. neither does an ovedose of coppersafe (mardel). I then dropped him in fresh tap water which at first i thought worked, because he started to curl up slightly and "play dead". after about ten seconds i figured he was a goner, but i put him back in SW to make sure and he sprung back to life. I then put him in FW for a full minute but that didn't work. When I put him back in SW he came back to life. slower, but still alive. i'll try hypersaline again on him and see what he does. At least with the FW it stunned him, so i may dip each piece of rock in FW and and try to shake them out. If the're buried it may not work, but there are not a lot of options for this kind of problem….
This battling and experimenting went on (and on and on…). There were times when I would go a week or more without seeing any and I thought it was finally over (wrong!). then I would catch a total of 7 or more in a night. Hitting 10, I thought this must be the last of them, then 20, 30, 40,..
As time went on it seemed like a never ending battle with an extreme infestation. With all the gutting and cleaning and dipping, my rock took a beating in the end. I still had some feather dusters left, but I lost a lot of other ones, and my rock was looking pretty plain. I thought of just getting rid of some of it, and adding some new stuff to re-seed it, but with the problem being so severe, I didn’t want to infect my new rock.
Anyway, here’s what did and didn’t work, along with my conclusions/opinions.
What didn’t:
Hypersaline dip (recommended is around 1.035, I went up to 1.048, measured with refractometer) didn’t seem to do anything. It’s common opinion to do this with new rock, to flush out things like Mantis shrimp, etc. it didn’t flush out one cirolanid though. In fact, when I did it with some of my crabs in it, it didn’t flush them out either. (Doing the freshwater made them bail out immediately).
Copper treatment didn’t seem to work. I put one of these bugs in a container and used an extreme amount of copper-safe and it didn’t phase it. Eventually it may have, but at this level anything else in the tank (including my rock) would not have done well.
Extreme temp changes (60-90 deg F.) didn’t seem to affect them either.
What did (sort of)
Freshwater dips had mixed results. Cold water worked, but hot water worked better.
Here’s another quote:
The battle continues. Cold freshwater was a step in the right direction, but not good enough. The day after the above, i found three more on the fish.
After further experimentation with one of them, i found that if they hide deeper in the rock, they won't let go in cold water. i tried hot water and they let go and appear to die almost instantly.
i then started taking out all my rock and doing a hot freshwater dip. i found five more at the bottom of my tub. i put these in the container with the other one i had captured. these things are very tough. about an hour later, the first one started showing signs of life!
it is still alive but moving slow. it can't swim, but i may have injured it when i pulled it off. this one wasn't in hot water for very long, like the ones in the tub. two of the others came alive, but appear to be dead this morning.
after all this, i still found two more on the fish last night. which i've captured.
This brings the grand total to 28. What a nightmare.
As you see, freshwater is better than hypersaline, but you must do it in moderation. It is a fine line between getting rid of these bugs, and keeping your LR alive.
Here’s my observations of these things in captivity:
For the most part, these things like to hunt at night, and like to hide during the day. I put a small piece of rock in the container (glass) that I had them in, and they seemed to prefer the rock over the sand or open areas. I never saw one bury itself in the sand. The most they would do is either sit on top, or bury their head, leaving the rear exposed. Normally they would cling to various parts of the rock, but sometimes they would hide deeper in the rock. They blend VERY well with the rock, and there were times where I thought I “lost” one or two, because I couldn’t find them, even picking up the rock and looking for them. Maybe a day or so would pass and I could count all of them. They also swim VERY fast. If I touched one with tweezers, it would bolt across the container.
The longest I could keep one alive was about 4 weeks. The shortest was a day or so. Now don’t take this to mean in a month you’re home free. They apparently can survive a very long time without food. I kept them in less than ideal conditions. Other than topping off the container, I never did anything with it. Also the ones from the dips didn’t last as long as the ones that were picked off, but the picked off ones may also have been damaged when I squeezed them to pull them off. Also, the ones that survived the dips and made it back into the tank seemed healthy and eating (my fish unfortunately). An interesting note is that as time progressed, I noticed a lot of micro bugs in the water. I believe they were amphipods/copepods. These things were so small that when they moved, the water didn’t. this was easiest to observe at night, with a flashlight across the top of the water.
In conclusion here’s my take on dealing with this problem, and hopefully avoiding it in the first place.
When getting new rock, do a 30-60 second WARM freshwater dip. This should flush out any hitchhikers, and leave your rock alive and intact. I did this with my new rock (Lalo) and it seemed fine. ( I did 2 min. HOT dips several times during this ordeal and my rock survived, but I did lose some tube worms and feather dusters.)
Monitor your fish. Besides looking for obvious signs of disease, look for chew marks out of their tails and fins. Almost everyone I saw was attached to a tail/fin and not the body, but nonetheless observe everything. There were occasions where my Sailfin tang would have a piece of fin missing in the shape of these bugs. Not good.
If you think you have problem, pay attention to where the fish sleep at night. Using this method I was able to isolate a few “suspect” pieces of rock that had several bugs in them and remove them. If I had done this right away, instead of later into it, it may have done a lot to help stop this sooner.
MOST important, decide NOW, what your plan of attack is. Depending on your setup, fish, corals etc. you either need to remove the fish to a QT for several months or more, or remove your rock, dip it and go from there. Either way, you need to get rid of them ASAP, before they breed. Otherwise you may never “keep up” with them. You have some options (sort of), it just depends on how far you are willing to go before “starting over” like I ended up doing.. If I had done these last few steps in the first place, I may have avoided this all together, or stopped it a lot sooner.
One last thing, for me, I plan on getting my tank running with all the fish I want, before adding my corals. This way my tank will be stable, bio load wise, and I can monitor my water quality for later addition of corals. Also, if you wait to add corals, and you have a problem with the fish, such as this, it will be A LOT easier to move rock around and catch fish, without worrying about damaging/stressing corals.
I have this whole ordeal documented in a journal, which I use to write down water changes, new additions, tests, additives, etc. if you don’t have one, I would highly recommend it, so you can go back to any given day, and see what you have been doing to your tank.
Good luck, and I hope you are reading this for informative purposes and not because you have this problem. :)
First, thanks to those who offered support/encouragement/tips.
Over a several month battle, I ended up with 45 of these little !@#$@*)#.
They can come in on Live Rock, or Unquarantined fish. I would highly recommend a QT tank of some kind for all new arrivals. Not only to monitor health, but to inspect for bugs.
Also following the below methods of dipping new rock should also help. One thing to remember, if you have corals though, is even though you follow the above for fish and rock, since some corals come attached to rock, there’s always a chance of hitchhikers in it, since you can’t just dip the rock without damaging the coral.
In the end, I gutted my tank threw out my sand, and put in new rock and sand. There is not a lot of info on these things out there, so a lot of it was trial and error. I will briefly describe what I did to start the tank in the beginning, how I found the first one, and what I did to battle them. I will then list what didn’t work, and what sort of worked. The bottom line with these, is anything you would do to kill them directly in a tank will also damage/kill anything thing else around them, short of waiting 2-12 months in hopes they starved in a tank with no fish. Some of the old rock I could have boiled, but it would no longer be “live rock”. It would be dead base rock. That may work out for some, but for myself, I like the setup of my new rock, without adding more.
Here’s a copy of part of the original post.
I believe it came in on my rock. it is more common on rock from florida, but all my rock is from the pacific. 3 months ago i bought some fiji premium show rock. big pieces. 3 weeks ago i ordered some lalo rock to add to the tank. at that time i took out my fiji and broke it into some smaller pieces to rework the tank. about a week later i started adding the lalo after curing it outside the tank. 4 days after the last pieces were added i found the first one on a maroon clown. since then the battle has begun. it could have been the lalo, but it could also have been the fiji that i broke open. they may have been active right after reworking the fiji and i didn't notice. i only knew about them from reading an article in the marine fish and reef annual edition. i know there is one more at least because i caught a glimpse of it yesterday..
Either way, at this point the battle was beginning. The most effective method was capture the fish, pick off the bug, and put him back. I did this MANY times, which I’m sure stressed the fish, but they never got sick, and always acted fine. (except when they saw the net coming).
With several bugs attached, the fish would act fine, but you could see where fins were chewed through, when the bugs finished eating for the day.
As time progressed, it was harder and harder to find/see these bugs. The first one was out in the morning with the lights on, but most of them wouldn’t come out until around 2:00 am and would drop off the fish by around 6-7:00 am. These things swim FAST too. The odds of catching one off a fish is pretty nill. I put several of these bugs in a separate container for study/experimentation. They are adept at “playing dead”, but will bolt in a moments notice. Here’s another quote.
…extreme heat and cold don't seem to affect them. neither does an ovedose of coppersafe (mardel). I then dropped him in fresh tap water which at first i thought worked, because he started to curl up slightly and "play dead". after about ten seconds i figured he was a goner, but i put him back in SW to make sure and he sprung back to life. I then put him in FW for a full minute but that didn't work. When I put him back in SW he came back to life. slower, but still alive. i'll try hypersaline again on him and see what he does. At least with the FW it stunned him, so i may dip each piece of rock in FW and and try to shake them out. If the're buried it may not work, but there are not a lot of options for this kind of problem….
This battling and experimenting went on (and on and on…). There were times when I would go a week or more without seeing any and I thought it was finally over (wrong!). then I would catch a total of 7 or more in a night. Hitting 10, I thought this must be the last of them, then 20, 30, 40,..
As time went on it seemed like a never ending battle with an extreme infestation. With all the gutting and cleaning and dipping, my rock took a beating in the end. I still had some feather dusters left, but I lost a lot of other ones, and my rock was looking pretty plain. I thought of just getting rid of some of it, and adding some new stuff to re-seed it, but with the problem being so severe, I didn’t want to infect my new rock.
Anyway, here’s what did and didn’t work, along with my conclusions/opinions.
What didn’t:
Hypersaline dip (recommended is around 1.035, I went up to 1.048, measured with refractometer) didn’t seem to do anything. It’s common opinion to do this with new rock, to flush out things like Mantis shrimp, etc. it didn’t flush out one cirolanid though. In fact, when I did it with some of my crabs in it, it didn’t flush them out either. (Doing the freshwater made them bail out immediately).
Copper treatment didn’t seem to work. I put one of these bugs in a container and used an extreme amount of copper-safe and it didn’t phase it. Eventually it may have, but at this level anything else in the tank (including my rock) would not have done well.
Extreme temp changes (60-90 deg F.) didn’t seem to affect them either.
What did (sort of)
Freshwater dips had mixed results. Cold water worked, but hot water worked better.
Here’s another quote:
The battle continues. Cold freshwater was a step in the right direction, but not good enough. The day after the above, i found three more on the fish.
After further experimentation with one of them, i found that if they hide deeper in the rock, they won't let go in cold water. i tried hot water and they let go and appear to die almost instantly.
i then started taking out all my rock and doing a hot freshwater dip. i found five more at the bottom of my tub. i put these in the container with the other one i had captured. these things are very tough. about an hour later, the first one started showing signs of life!
it is still alive but moving slow. it can't swim, but i may have injured it when i pulled it off. this one wasn't in hot water for very long, like the ones in the tub. two of the others came alive, but appear to be dead this morning.
after all this, i still found two more on the fish last night. which i've captured.
This brings the grand total to 28. What a nightmare.
As you see, freshwater is better than hypersaline, but you must do it in moderation. It is a fine line between getting rid of these bugs, and keeping your LR alive.
Here’s my observations of these things in captivity:
For the most part, these things like to hunt at night, and like to hide during the day. I put a small piece of rock in the container (glass) that I had them in, and they seemed to prefer the rock over the sand or open areas. I never saw one bury itself in the sand. The most they would do is either sit on top, or bury their head, leaving the rear exposed. Normally they would cling to various parts of the rock, but sometimes they would hide deeper in the rock. They blend VERY well with the rock, and there were times where I thought I “lost” one or two, because I couldn’t find them, even picking up the rock and looking for them. Maybe a day or so would pass and I could count all of them. They also swim VERY fast. If I touched one with tweezers, it would bolt across the container.
The longest I could keep one alive was about 4 weeks. The shortest was a day or so. Now don’t take this to mean in a month you’re home free. They apparently can survive a very long time without food. I kept them in less than ideal conditions. Other than topping off the container, I never did anything with it. Also the ones from the dips didn’t last as long as the ones that were picked off, but the picked off ones may also have been damaged when I squeezed them to pull them off. Also, the ones that survived the dips and made it back into the tank seemed healthy and eating (my fish unfortunately). An interesting note is that as time progressed, I noticed a lot of micro bugs in the water. I believe they were amphipods/copepods. These things were so small that when they moved, the water didn’t. this was easiest to observe at night, with a flashlight across the top of the water.
In conclusion here’s my take on dealing with this problem, and hopefully avoiding it in the first place.
When getting new rock, do a 30-60 second WARM freshwater dip. This should flush out any hitchhikers, and leave your rock alive and intact. I did this with my new rock (Lalo) and it seemed fine. ( I did 2 min. HOT dips several times during this ordeal and my rock survived, but I did lose some tube worms and feather dusters.)
Monitor your fish. Besides looking for obvious signs of disease, look for chew marks out of their tails and fins. Almost everyone I saw was attached to a tail/fin and not the body, but nonetheless observe everything. There were occasions where my Sailfin tang would have a piece of fin missing in the shape of these bugs. Not good.
If you think you have problem, pay attention to where the fish sleep at night. Using this method I was able to isolate a few “suspect” pieces of rock that had several bugs in them and remove them. If I had done this right away, instead of later into it, it may have done a lot to help stop this sooner.
MOST important, decide NOW, what your plan of attack is. Depending on your setup, fish, corals etc. you either need to remove the fish to a QT for several months or more, or remove your rock, dip it and go from there. Either way, you need to get rid of them ASAP, before they breed. Otherwise you may never “keep up” with them. You have some options (sort of), it just depends on how far you are willing to go before “starting over” like I ended up doing.. If I had done these last few steps in the first place, I may have avoided this all together, or stopped it a lot sooner.
One last thing, for me, I plan on getting my tank running with all the fish I want, before adding my corals. This way my tank will be stable, bio load wise, and I can monitor my water quality for later addition of corals. Also, if you wait to add corals, and you have a problem with the fish, such as this, it will be A LOT easier to move rock around and catch fish, without worrying about damaging/stressing corals.
I have this whole ordeal documented in a journal, which I use to write down water changes, new additions, tests, additives, etc. if you don’t have one, I would highly recommend it, so you can go back to any given day, and see what you have been doing to your tank.
Good luck, and I hope you are reading this for informative purposes and not because you have this problem. :)