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I currently have several fish with what appears to be white spot but have also noticed what look like tiny crabs on the glass. I managed to take a pic of one, It is about 1mm - 1.5mm long The bigger one look like they have a set of claws or two appendages, See what u guys think.



[IMG:357:357]http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/bb15 ... 0mag-1.jpg[/img]

will try to get some more pics tomorrow.

dont have proper camera for it though

Do they all have this Mickey Mouse shape of ar the two smaller parts just smaller creatures of the smae type that just happen to be in that position?

Just wondering, because the one you have shown is a very disctinctive shape, so should be easy to ID.

Hi -

Looks like a Cyclops, or related genus, - a female with two egg packets.

Lee

Hi -

I should have added: As far as I know these organisms (Cyclops) are not parasitic. In fact they make good fish food.

Lee

is it possible for cyclops to live in a fresh water tank. I have feed them frozen cyclops and these creatures are alive, or should i say where. I have killed most of them. They creatures mostly have the two appendages, the smaller creatures have none.

There is deffinatly a parasite infestation on the fish.

Bleach kills them, they can survive at 35 degrees Celcius. So far all the white spot treatments i have used havent worked. Does anyone out there have any idea what parasite this might be.

Yes it looks like a Cyclops, and yes Cyclops are freshwater animals.

I have not fed live cyclops (I barely even fed frosen!) and yet I have live Cyclops in all my tanks
They are harmless and great fishfood as mentioned above.

sorry my mistake

I thought cyclops came from salt water lakes

because of cyclop-eeze

now i know what to look for

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/ind ... crust.html

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/micropo ... rame3.html

thank you

the water was good ph 7, no nitrates, no nitrites, no ammonia. I use rain water in my tanks and condition with wood and peat in the filters.

The fish that had the problem where new and had been shipped taking aproximately 12 hours shipping time. Temp dropped to 16 degrees Celcius in there bags. Shipper did not use heat packs. In future i will insist on heat packs. Tank was established. Shipper told me to look for small white creatures on the glass and blamed them for the infestation on the fish.
Fish started dying day after arrival and infestation showed 3 days after arrival.

I have lost a few but looks like most are through the worst. They are currently in a hospital tank undergoing treatment.

According to the cyclopeeze website the lake they harvest from is salt lake.

Quote taken from there website

The culture site for
CYCLOP-EEZE® consists
of a large arctic lake
several hundred square miles
in area and of shallow depth.
There are 300 sunny days per year with sunlight fully penetrating this immense "thin film" body of water from springtime until autumn. During late autumn, winter and early springtime, this ecosystem remains frozen to approximately one half of the lake's depth.
The ecosystem's water chemistry is unique in that it contains very high levels of dissolved inorganic ions.
In comparison with other "Salt Lakes" the "culture lake" is quite "inhospit-able" to other animals. It contains no fish, reptiles, amphibians, waterfowl, birds or other predators. Thus, the culture ecosystem is truly isolated on both the grounds of climatology and its extreme water chemistry. CYCLOP-EEZE® live in a very special protected ecosystem. During warm periods, they feed upon unicellular and special planktonic algae. These algal substrates thrive during the long hours of arctic, summer sunshine. . .

they were L333s

i could be wrong i am just going on the following statement on the website.

In comparison with other "Salt Lakes" the "culture lake" is quite "inhospit-able"

My understanding of the english language leads me to think that they are implying that the lake they take the cyclopeeze from is a salt lake.

I could be wrong. It dosent say specificly it is salt.But if it was Fresh you would think they would say "In comparison with other Fresh water Lakes"

I had been running it at 32 degrees celcius for nearly a week when i decided to strip the tank down and wash everything with bleach, as the infestation on the fish was getting worse. It was a no substrate tank that had daily vacum of food leftovers. It was also running a well estabilished cannister filter.

also running tunse 4565 and hydor K3 for extra current. This also made it easy to vacum and you could see the white spot cysts on the tank floor all collecting together with fish poo and left overs.

Those are freshwater copepods, of that I have no doubt, but whether they are typical Cyclops is another matter. Many of these are present in my cherry shrimp culture tanks where there are few fish to predate on them.
They are typically harmless and are sometimes an indication that your aquarium ecology has reached a stage of great diversity which is usually a good thing. Many animals in this class are harmful to very small fry such as newly hatched Tetras and similarly small fry but are otherwise harmless. They have no relationship to any diseases that your fish may have.

I see the nauplii of these hatch out shortly after adding killifish egg containing peat moss to the hatching tank. These animals share with brine shrimp the ability to form drought resistant cysts which hatch soon after rewetting.

thank you apistomaster and everyone else for the replies, I always believe it is a good day if you learn something new.

Looks like the tank was in good balance, and i have destroyed that balance . Hopefully the cannister filter that was not stripped down will still have some live ones in and they will recolonise the tank. I only lost two more of the new L333s that i recieved. Still a big disapointment.

I will insist that they are shipped with heat packs from now on.

One the good side i have found the same little creatures in a couple of the other tanks. So i will try to spread them round.

Thank you very much for all ur responces

i have these in my tank, look slightly diffrent though more rounder, i mistook them for baby snails at first but they move too fast and are very nimble through the gravel.

my kribs enjoy eating them so i havent bothered to remove them.

i have been treating the tank for a fungus treatment over the last few weeks, i hadent really noticed them until then, so maybe the two are related.

Just a small addendum/clarification to apistomasters post. Many copepods (aprox 25% of all species)are in fact external parasites of fish and can cause irritation/stress to adult fish. I would not call them "otherwise harmless"
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q ... a=N&tab=wi
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entre ... t=Abstract
I find parasitic copepods clinging on the native species I catch on a regular basis.

It sounds like you have an infestation and I would treat with something like "clout"

Thank you Seedy

Great Links

Now i dont feel so bad about stripping the tank down.

I think i have it under control know.Lost a few fish but looks like the spots on the fish are disapearing. They still seem to be off there food.

Hopefully they will start eating over the next couple of days.

Vacumn leftover food and any cysts from the bottom of the tank twice daily.

I Love planet catfish

Seedy wrote:Just a small addendum/clarification to apistomasters post. Many copepods (aprox 25% of all species)are in fact external parasites of fish and can cause irritation/stress to adult fish. I would not call them "otherwise harmless"
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q ... a=N&tab=wi
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entre ... t=Abstract
I find parasitic copepods clinging on the native species I catch on a regular basis.

It sounds like you have an infestation and I would treat with something like "clout"

You are totally correct. I had in mind only the free swimming forms with the typical twin egg sacks. They can be a good food source but many fish do not like them. The species shown is not parasitic and does not warrant any treatment.

The other "critters" described in a previous post sound like an entirely different animal. Ostracods would be my guess based on the poster's description. Again, not an animal all fish will eat due to their hard carapaces. Other than that they are not generally harmful and their new born do make good fish food.

apistomaster wrote: The species shown is not parasitic and does not warrant any treatment.

I have to disagree. I don't think it is possible to diagnose this from that picture alone. The Original Poster also states:

"There is deffinatly a parasite infestation on the fish. "

Also note that the OP states that his shipper informed him of the infestation as well

Shipper told me to look for small white creatures on the glass and blamed them for the infestation on the fish.
Fish started dying day after arrival and infestation showed 3 days after arrival.

If the animal in the photograph is also attaching itself to the fish, then I think there is a clear diagnosis that this is a parasitic species. I would examine the gills and outside of the fish to see if these copepods are attaching themselves to the fish or not.