What Ate my Blue Leg Hermits?

[Casket_Case]

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.

How can I reach your levels of trolling

 

[KingLucy1997]

How can I reach your levels of trolling

1. Have something so disturbing and absurd happen to you twice that no one believes.
2. Be enrolled in a medical professional school that is working you so hard you maybe sleep every other day.
3. Watch your beautiful creatures be devoured with revulsion, horror, and sadness twice.
4. Isolate the last surviving crab, surgically remove every visible fluke and the oddly shaped black flatworm with disturbingly prominent blank white eyes residing with the hermit crab in the shell.
5. Finally get the shell off of the hermit crab to dislodge the largest flatworm.
6. Place the deceptively parasite free crab in a small quarentine tank with some calcium powder at the bottom for 1-4 days.
7. Add the healthy hermit to a newly cycled tank and treat with anti-fluke medication.
8. Leave for 2 hours
9. Come home to a dead hermit crab with a exit wound in its abdomen, cysts all over the macroalgae, flatworms hiding in peices of seaweed and burrowing under the substrate to reveal only a inconspicuous proboscis.
10. Observe the hermit crab that seemed to be happy hours ago be approached and nibbled on by one of the flatworms in the algae wafers.
11. Post on aquatics forum, become the laughing stock of the aquarium community (best part tbh).
12. Have a mental breakdown that turns into a psychotic break where you rip out carpeting, bleach every surface, scrub between your toes until they bleed with carpet cleaner, boil every utensil that might have touched the parasites.
13. Come back to reality not knowing what is real anymore
14. Have an aquatic disease expert (referring to the 'colleague' Roy talks about if you look at the attached screen cap) tell you he will identify the parasites if you fix them in a special way with specific equipment that I need to pay for and that the first tests will cost $500 dollars but he will probably have to do more. And I have to pay shipping too.
15. Unleash all of you pent up rage at how much of a scam higher education is and wish them goodbye by saying I hope that the Florida aquaculture industry will be wiped out by parasites.
16. Remember life is meaningless and try to go on with your life.
17. Get sucked back in when a scientists guesses the parasites could be Fasciola gigantica, Fasciola hepatica or a similar type of flatworm in there multitude of life cycle stages.
18. Become even more confused where the boundary of reality stops and imagination begins.
19. Remember nothing has any inherent meaning so the line between reality and imagination doesn't matter as long as other people don't perceive me as insane.
20. Go back to making terrariums and in a few years when I may consider another aquarium never buy online.
That is my story. If you are tired of me 'trolling' you I am more tired of existing. Don't worry I'm not suicidal, I just hate life.

 

[Staghorn]

Don’t hate life, Life is a roller coaster. Sometimes everything’s great sometimes you run into an immortal species of invertebrate that makes life impossible. I think your right to take a hiatus from aquariums. You can retry again based on these experiences sometime in the future. Our future is going to be filled with unbelievable things most of us can’t imagine. One day when your very old you can take a look back and see the ups and the downs and you won’t regret any of it.

 

[Casket_Case]

1. Have something so disturbing and absurd happen to you twice that no one believes.
2. Be enrolled in a medical professional school that is working you so hard you maybe sleep every other day.
3. Watch your beautiful creatures be devoured with revulsion, horror, and sadness twice.
4. Isolate the last surviving crab, surgically remove every visible fluke and the oddly shaped black flatworm with disturbingly prominent blank white eyes residing with the hermit crab in the shell.
5. Finally get the shell off of the hermit crab to dislodge the largest flatworm.
6. Place the deceptively parasite free crab in a small quarentine tank with some calcium powder at the bottom for 1-4 days.
7. Add the healthy hermit to a newly cycled tank and treat with anti-fluke medication.
8. Leave for 2 hours
9. Come home to a dead hermit crab with a exit wound in its abdomen, cysts all over the macroalgae, flatworms hiding in peices of seaweed and burrowing under the substrate to reveal only a inconspicuous proboscis.
10. Observe the hermit crab that seemed to be happy hours ago be approached and nibbled on by one of the flatworms in the algae wafers.
11. Post on aquatics forum, become the laughing stock of the aquarium community (best part tbh).
12. Have a mental breakdown that turns into a psychotic break where you rip out carpeting, bleach every surface, scrub between your toes until they bleed with carpet cleaner, boil every utensil that might have touched the parasites.
13. Come back to reality not knowing what is real anymore
14. Have an aquatic disease expert (referring to the 'colleague' Roy talks about if you look at the attached screen cap) tell you he will identify the parasites if you fix them in a special way with specific equipment that I need to pay for and that the first tests will cost $500 dollars but he will probably have to do more. And I have to pay shipping too.
15. Unleash all of you pent up rage at how much of a scam higher education is and wish them goodbye by saying I hope that the Florida aquaculture industry will be wiped out by parasites.
16. Remember life is meaningless and try to go on with your life.
17. Get sucked back in when a scientists guesses the parasites could be Fasciola gigantica, Fasciola hepatica or a similar type of flatworm in there multitude of life cycle stages.
18. Become even more confused where the boundary of reality stops and imagination begins.
19. Remember nothing has any inherent meaning so the line between reality and imagination doesn't matter as long as other people don't perceive me as insane.
20. Go back to making terrariums and in a few years when I may consider another aquarium never buy online.
That is my story. If you are tired of me 'trolling' you I am more tired of existing. Don't worry I'm not suicidal, I just hate life.

Sorry I didn’t know you were for real it was so crazy it seemed unreal. If I were you I’d get a small tank 10-20g with a HOB filter a light, caribsea sand, a little dry rock, a bottle of bacteria and start very simple all over again. Did you go to a store in person to get your critters from before or online

 

[KingLucy1997]

How can I reach your levels of trolling

Sorry I didn’t know you were for real it was so crazy it seemed unreal. If I were you I’d get a small tank 10-20g with a HOB filter a light, caribsea sand, a little dry rock, a bottle of bacteria and start very simple all over again. Did you go to a store in person to get your critters from before or online

Sorry I didn’t know you were for real it was so crazy it seemed unreal. If I were you I’d get a small tank 10-20g with a HOB filter a light, caribsea sand, a little dry rock, a bottle of bacteria and start very simple all over again. Did you go to a store in person to get your critters from before or online

Sorry I didn’t know you were for real it was so crazy it seemed unreal. If I were you I’d get a small tank 10-20g with a HOB filter a light, caribsea sand, a little dry rock, a bottle of bacteria and start very simple all over again. Did you go to a store in person to get your critters from before or online

I got them from both Florida aqua companies, they both took down my reviews and denied they had ever seen what I described. Wikipedia the flatworms the scientist on the screen shot guesses, it is the most similar but a few notable differences. But differences could be due to the lack of study around them. They Fac

Sorry I didn’t know you were for real it was so crazy it seemed unreal. If I were you I’d get a small tank 10-20g with a HOB filter a light, caribsea sand, a little dry rock, a bottle of bacteria and start very simple all over again. Did you go to a store in person to get your critters from before or online

i got them all from companies based in Florida- probably the Keys. I have the names of both in those thread somewhere. And they were are through the mail. I haven’t heard of anyone else experience this except in neglected tropical regions and areas with poor water management

 

[KingLucy1997]

I got them from both Florida aqua companies, they both took down my reviews and denied they had ever seen what I described. Wikipedia the flatworms the scientist on the screen shot guesses, it is the most similar but a few notable differences. But differences could be due to the lack of study around them. They Fac

i got them all from companies based in Florida- probably the Keys. I have the names of both in those thread somewhere. And they were are through the mail. I haven’t heard of anyone else experience this except in neglected tropical regions and areas with poor water management

At least I didn’t eat them and get infected

 

[Casket_Case]

I got them from both Florida aqua companies, they both took down my reviews and denied they had ever seen what I described. Wikipedia the flatworms the scientist on the screen shot guesses, it is the most similar but a few notable differences. But differences could be due to the lack of study around them. They Fac

i got them all from companies based in Florida- probably the Keys. I have the names of both in those thread somewhere. And they were are through the mail. I haven’t heard of anyone else experience this except in neglected tropical regions and areas with poor water management

Just order it all through Amazon that’s what I did, and then I found a great local reefer and I’ve bought coral off of him. Just ensure you start completely new or make sure the live rock has been dry for a loooong time.

 

[KingLucy1997]

Just order it all through Amazon that’s what I did, and then I found a great local reefer and I’ve bought coral off of him. Just ensure you start completely new or make sure the live rock has been dry for a loooong time.

I have never seen real coral on Amazon- was it a private trade?

 

[Casket_Case]

I don’t ge

I have never seen real coral on Amazon- was it a private trade?

t coral from Amazon but you can buy coral from Amazon but I wouldn’t that’s how you get parasitic Godzilla hybrid alien flatworms

 

[KingLucy1997]

I don’t ge

t coral from Amazon but you can buy coral from Amazon but I wouldn’t that’s how you get parasitic Godzilla hybrid alien flatworms

Hahahah yeah that makes way more sense

 

[KingLucy1997]

My experiment to help differentiate hallucinations caused by sleep deprivation and reality
TLDR: I get a good night of sleep and put the container of what I think are parasites outside. If I’m well rested and I see what I saw today, the core of my whole aquarium narrative is real. If it’s clearly dirt tomorrow I will know they are all just in my head and have nothing to fear.
I have a new development with what I can only say is an eternal curse on any sort of enclosed environment with plants and animals I attempt to create.​

Backstory- while the parasites were developing in my aquariums, a had a beautiful terrarium with all sorts of isopod varieties, plants, mites, springtails, etc. My vision was a self sustaining ecosystem and I got pretty dang close to a simple one but that’s besides the point. I transferred some of the live rock from the infected aquarium into my terrarium. I started to notice some odd cycsts and other parasite looking things starting to develop. I was also seeing a little bit of movement out of these suspicious Anomalies and wasn’t sure if they were the parasites or not but I didn’t I want to take the chance it and I put all the contents of the terrarium in an outdoor compost bin(it was early spring, hopefully the isopods live).
Now it is the end of June and I bought a beautiful glass and would terrarium. Yesterday I used the dirt from a large pot that I have had through the entire ordeal that contained some cat grass and maybe one isopod at the time of filling the pot. I would occasionally use water from the aquariums around the time of the infections in the cat grass pot I am currently using for my new terrariums substrate. I found the substrate to be teaming with what looked like tiny diverse insect life. Perfect! Then I tried to make little lakes inside the terrarium that I didn’t plan out right and the entry point was too small for manipulating the objects needed to create mini ponds that actually hold standing water. So I ended up just water logging about 1.5-2” of the substrate. This sat all night and all day today. When I finally get back from work, I am horrified that the entire substrate seems to be pulsing. I look closer and see little cryptically camaflouged arthropod looking balls, mouths, and other parts moving. Some are actually using their spindly arms to move chunks of nitrogen fertilizer into its mouth? Maybe? The excessive amount of water must have caused them to hatch. At first I am neutral, the creatures are trapped and I can observe them better than I could in the aquariums. They are brown little blobs and have little white eye spots and pretty much just stay in one place in the terrarium. I was able to find an individual on my carpet awkwardly crawling around. I thought about grabbing it but it won’t last long without humidity and I just sprayed Raid on it cause I wanted it dead. Then i see what looks like little proboscises trying to stick out of the wood where the glass of the terrarium meets the wood base. This detail was probably a hallucination because there is a layer of glass between the wood base and the terrarium interior. But what I think was probably real was seeing larger ‘individuals’ in the terrarium move rhythmically as if breathing, which was deforming the glass and wooden base. Worse yet, the coconut peel tower in the center that was covered in the pulsating things happened to have a metal paper clip stuck in it pointing the direction of the opening of the terrarium which is designed to be loosely plugged by a light wooden ball. This motion was lifting the wooden ball. Fearing the glass would shatter, I sprayed raid around the crease where the terrarium glass and wooden base are glued together just in case then brought the whole thing to a public park picnic table. It was still pulsating when I left. Ill go get a pic now and tomorrow morning to get a better idea on the extent of my hallucinations creeping into my reality from sleep deprivation.

 

[TeotheCoral]

Me!!!!

 

[Casket_Case]

My experiment to help differentiate hallucinations caused by sleep deprivation and reality
TLDR: I get a good night of sleep and put the container of what I think are parasites outside. If I’m well rested and I see what I saw today, the core of my whole aquarium narrative is real. If it’s clearly dirt tomorrow I will know they are all just in my head and have nothing to fear.
I have a new development with what I can only say is an eternal curse on any sort of enclosed environment with plants and animals I attempt to create.​

Backstory- while the parasites were developing in my aquariums, a had a beautiful terrarium with all sorts of isopod varieties, plants, mites, springtails, etc. My vision was a self sustaining ecosystem and I got pretty dang close to a simple one but that’s besides the point. I transferred some of the live rock from the infected aquarium into my terrarium. I started to notice some odd cycsts and other parasite looking things starting to develop. I was also seeing a little bit of movement out of these suspicious Anomalies and wasn’t sure if they were the parasites or not but I didn’t I want to take the chance it and I put all the contents of the terrarium in an outdoor compost bin(it was early spring, hopefully the isopods live).
Now it is the end of June and I bought a beautiful glass and would terrarium. Yesterday I used the dirt from a large pot that I have had through the entire ordeal that contained some cat grass and maybe one isopod at the time of filling the pot. I would occasionally use water from the aquariums around the time of the infections in the cat grass pot I am currently using for my new terrariums substrate. I found the substrate to be teaming with what looked like tiny diverse insect life. Perfect! Then I tried to make little lakes inside the terrarium that I didn’t plan out right and the entry point was too small for manipulating the objects needed to create mini ponds that actually hold standing water. So I ended up just water logging about 1.5-2” of the substrate. This sat all night and all day today. When I finally get back from work, I am horrified that the entire substrate seems to be pulsing. I look closer and see little cryptically camaflouged arthropod looking balls, mouths, and other parts moving. Some are actually using their spindly arms to move chunks of nitrogen fertilizer into its mouth? Maybe? The excessive amount of water must have caused them to hatch. At first I am neutral, the creatures are trapped and I can observe them better than I could in the aquariums. They are brown little blobs and have little white eye spots and pretty much just stay in one place in the terrarium. I was able to find an individual on my carpet awkwardly crawling around. I thought about grabbing it but it won’t last long without humidity and I just sprayed Raid on it cause I wanted it dead. Then i see what looks like little proboscises trying to stick out of the wood where the glass of the terrarium meets the wood base. This detail was probably a hallucination because there is a layer of glass between the wood base and the terrarium interior. But what I think was probably real was seeing larger ‘individuals’ in the terrarium move rhythmically as if breathing, which was deforming the glass and wooden base. Worse yet, the coconut peel tower in the center that was covered in the pulsating things happened to have a metal paper clip stuck in it pointing the direction of the opening of the terrarium which is designed to be loosely plugged by a light wooden ball. This motion was lifting the wooden ball. Fearing the glass would shatter, I sprayed raid around the crease where the terrarium glass and wooden base are glued together just in case then brought the whole thing to a public park picnic table. It was still pulsating when I left. Ill go get a pic now and tomorrow morning to get a better idea on the extent of my hallucinations creeping into my reality from sleep deprivation.

They seem to also adapt at an incredible rate, some small adaptations exempli gratia color can be seen over the course of a year in some insects but going totally terrestrial is another. These definitely need to be contained. Please make sure no-one gets the terrarium. Please dispose of it, I’d cover it in raid and shut it in a container with a fog bomb.

 

[KingLucy1997]

They seem to also adapt at an incredible rate, some small adaptations exempli gratia color can be seen over the course of a year in some insects but going totally terrestrial is another. These definitely need to be contained. Please make sure no-one gets the terrarium. Please dispose of it, I’d cover it in raid and shut it in a container with a fog bomb.

Well I am pretty confident that was a hallucination because nothing unusual with it today after finally getting a night of sleep. It doesn’t seem like there is any areas where it broke out and the lid which is a loosely fitted wooden ball is still covering the entry. Which is good news for earth. I should probably sleep more.

 

[KingLucy1997]

Ah I figured out what was causing the ‘pulsing’. I forgot that the substrate had a white worm colony and a diverse native mite population. White worms running away from the water at the bottom all at once is what caused the whole substrate to look like it was breathing and I wasn’t picking out individual mites so what I though was some insect arm attached to a head was just a stick across a pebble with a mite crawling on/around it moving the stick and giving a bunch of random objects the appearance of a single organism.