I Was Parasitized Last Night!

[Beverly]

Back in November 2003, we found some bugs in our then 72g. After much reading, posting to Dr. Ron, we concluded we had non-parasitic isopods:



Over the years, rock has been in one tank or another, corals have moved tanks, sandbeds were removed, tanks upgraded, geez, a whole mess of stuff has gone on with our three reefs.

Got a rusty dwarf angel over a month ago for our 120g. He wasn't getting into the eating thing very well for the first few days, so I decided to feed it a half scallop onion-bagged and elasticked to a small piece of rock. He loved it instantly. A couple of weeks later our latticed butterfly caught on that this was great stuff, and it began to eat it too.

Scallop is added before morning feeding and taken out at least an hour before lights out. One night I forgot about the scallop until an hour after lights out, but did finally get it out. Once removed from the piece of rock, ALL KINDS of isopods had burrowed into the bottom of the scallop. By that time, it was really stinky, but there were big and little isopods, presumably parents and offspring.

Have not had any problems with isopods on our fish in any of our tanks, which makes me believe we really do have scavenger, and not parasitic, isopods in probably all three reefs given their histories.

Last night, however, I put an extra powerhead in our 37g to "help" our GTBAs move from their crammed in spot. Got the powerhead in place, turned it on and some crud started blowing around. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed some kind of small bug swimming around.

Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain on one of my fingers! I called out to Chris who came right over. We managed to get it off my finger, only to have it settle up on my fore arm!! I pulled my arm from the water and Chris removed and killed it, so, sorry, there are no pics to compare the people biter to the pic from 2003.

I looked at my finger and it was bleeding from a tiny bite mark. I'm totally freaked, but am kinda thinking I'm getting old, but I'm not carrion just yet

Anyway, for the life of me, I couldn't remember the name of the bugs, and that bugged me Hadn't been over to RC for a few days, so I went over there this morning. Lo and behold, they have an article on catching parasitic isopods....

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-02/bp/index.php

And there's a link to the original article that helped us ID our original bug....

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-05/rs/index.php


Finger is okay today, but there is a small scar. Isopod wasn't on my fore arm long enough to do much damage and it's okay as well. Didn't get paralyzed or anything overnight, either.

And, yes, "parasitized" is a real word. Looked it up in the dictionary when Chris said I can't just make verbs out of nouns anytime I want