Help my pepermint shrimp has been infested!

Please could someone help me diagnose a problem? i have recently lost my sand blenny so thought i would do a water change whilst looking for the poor critters carcase! as i was replacing the water one of my pepermint shrimps keeled over and a maggot type beast riped through its side! at the moment it is still trying to get out, its about 1 cm long so far and about 2 mm in width, about half way down its body it has two little black dots, and a further 0.5 cm down it has a small black line, as i say it looks like a maggot and is wriggling in the same manner! should i be worried about the rest if the livestock? anyone suggest a remedy?

I have not added any new livestock since the shrimps 6 months ago, and had no problems untill yesterday, the only thing out of the ordinary has been a massive population growth of limpit and very small feather dusters!

please help!

levi

 

Look anything like the shrimp in figure 2 on this page?

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

 

no its more worm like, and on closer inspection, it looks like it has hundreds of little hairs on its body, it just broke out beneath the shrimps mouth, and is now just waving arround, looking for something, but has not completely out of the shrimp.

 

That's interesting...:

Personally, I'd be tempted to shoot first and ask questions later with something like that. I'd at least catch it and put it in a bucket for observation. The down side is, where there is 1 there are probably more.:-/

 

I second that motion!!! I guess I watched one too many of the Alien movies.

Jim

 

I would take it out to, when it gets done and it is the shrimp is would put it back, but if not you already have it caught and it will not bother any thing else in your tank.

 

Yep

Do it now!

 

It's probably an alien.

 

thanks for all the input, i took it out stright away as it killed the shrimp instantly! unfortunately the container was not big enough and when i got home the shrimp had started to decompose so even the alien is now dead the son of a b! it cost me £20....shame i cant bring it back to life so i can kill it again!

i am just worried that the same thing took out my blenny ( cant find the remains.....strange how that sometimes happens!) and my affect the remaining fish and inverts!

all i can do is wait and see i suppose, as none of my lfs's stock remedies for parasites or anything for a matter of fact!

 

Wow, that's a creepy story! Too bad you weren't able to get a picture of it for identification purposes. The description almost sounds like a chiton (sp?), but they tend to like fish, not shrimp.

At any rate, I'm sorry for your loss.