SuaSponte
Community Member
Background:
I setup a new aquarium a few months ago for my son—32 gallon biocube. I decided to use live rock and unfortunately the rock had isopod hitchikers. After catching a few and examining them and comparing them to pictures on this forum, I concluded with a high degree of certainty that they were the bad kind of isopod (i.e. cirolanid). I attempted to catch as many as I could using a bottle trap. I successfully removed over a dozen—mostly were medium to large (.5cm-1cm) in size and a few were smaller (less than .5 cm). After several days of active trapping I ceased capturing the isopods, thus I stopped using the bottle trap. Out of an abundance of caution, I left the tank fallow in hopes that any stragglers I did not catch would be starved out of existence.
Fast forward nearly three months:
Recently, my son started to inquire when we could add fish to his aquarium. This led me to throw the bottle trap back in the tank to see if I could catch anything. I had my fingers crossed that I wouldn’t catch anything, but unfortunately I did trap two small isopods (about 1mm in size). The appearance of these very small specimens is slightly different from the isopods that I initially caught a few months back, but I am not sure if that is due to them being juvenile specimens.
I’ve attached pictures in hopes the forum could positively ID the isopods that I caught the other night and verify if they are indeed cirolanid.
The prospect that the isopods have still been able to breed after three months in a tank with no fish is disheartening to say the least.
I setup a new aquarium a few months ago for my son—32 gallon biocube. I decided to use live rock and unfortunately the rock had isopod hitchikers. After catching a few and examining them and comparing them to pictures on this forum, I concluded with a high degree of certainty that they were the bad kind of isopod (i.e. cirolanid). I attempted to catch as many as I could using a bottle trap. I successfully removed over a dozen—mostly were medium to large (.5cm-1cm) in size and a few were smaller (less than .5 cm). After several days of active trapping I ceased capturing the isopods, thus I stopped using the bottle trap. Out of an abundance of caution, I left the tank fallow in hopes that any stragglers I did not catch would be starved out of existence.
Fast forward nearly three months:
Recently, my son started to inquire when we could add fish to his aquarium. This led me to throw the bottle trap back in the tank to see if I could catch anything. I had my fingers crossed that I wouldn’t catch anything, but unfortunately I did trap two small isopods (about 1mm in size). The appearance of these very small specimens is slightly different from the isopods that I initially caught a few months back, but I am not sure if that is due to them being juvenile specimens.
I’ve attached pictures in hopes the forum could positively ID the isopods that I caught the other night and verify if they are indeed cirolanid.
The prospect that the isopods have still been able to breed after three months in a tank with no fish is disheartening to say the least.
