Poppin from VT... you need not add snails or hermit crabs if you don't want to. I do, because I have a very nutrient rich tank (Seahorse tank) and often times the mysid and other foods flow through to the
refugium and therefore needs to be consumed. I've had other
refugia that never saw a snail or crab. Like the one on my 75G SPS and clam reef. The fish in the display would never let a tiny morsel go uneaten.
Walrus Reefer.... to be honest, I'd leave them be. Actually, I lied. I'd personally get the shrimp and the bloodsuckers out of the system. But that is just my opinion. It's not worth the 15 bucks to have the isopods successfully reproduce in your tank, or kill a shrimp and foul the system. I know very little about their life cycle, but don't want to learn about it as it involves my tanks
I've seen them on shrimp at the
LFS and wont even buy parasite free shrimp from the same tanks. They are easy to see if you look for them. Your best bet is to obtain pest free, and healthy shrimp. But...not everyone notices the nasty bugs!
Bopyrid Ispods are tough little buggers. They attach themselves to the gills of the shrimp and live off of their blood. Chances are, by the time you received the shrimp, the pod has really dug in. I'm actually surprised that you were successful removing one from a shrimp at all. I've seen the lesion they make, it's not pretty.
I harvest grass shrimp, or ghost shrimp from Cape Cod during the Summer. More than 1/4 of all the shrimp I net have these parasites. I toss them back into the ocean. I keep the others in a
QT for weeks before using them as feeders for my systems.
Dave
