Infested pepermint shrimp- Keep or flush?

[Flighty]

In a shipment of 12 Peppermint Shrimp, two had epicaridean isopods (I'm sure the following link is unnessesary for Ron, but it should help anyone else who has no idea what I'm talking about)

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

The two seem to be doing fine so... should I keep them, flush them, or sell them to the LFS as "rare offset humpback fancy shrimp".

Just got through a bout of fish sucking isopods and I'm not sure it's worth introducing new suckers even if they are harmless-ish.

Thanks,
~Cindy~

[rshimek]

Hi Cindy,

They are harmless to other shrimps (the isopod intermediate stages won't survive in reef tanks), and the infested animals will live a relatively long life. Personally, I don't see any reason to give them as an offering to the porcelain god.

[Flighty]

Great news! Was I wrong to get my money back from the dealer? They said they had never heard of or seen the parisites in the many years of buisness, but refunded the money for the two.

[Penfold]

Dr. Ron,

I have a couple of peppermint shrimp who have epicaridean isopods and two who do not. It seems that the uninfected shrimp molt more often and have grown faster than the other two, which would make sense. Are the infected shrimp also at a larger risk of getting sick later on down the road? I try to keep an eye on the less-than-hardy members of my tank and I wondered if I should keep a better eye on my two lumpy shrimp.

[rshimek]

Hi,

I did some (unpublished) research on some temperate shrimp-isopod natural history a few decades ago. See the image below of a couple of the shrimp. In that case, the shrimp seemed to live about as long as normal, but grew slower and produced fewer eggs. I couldn't tell much about infections or such, but my feeling was that they were not any more susceptible to them than were their unparasitized neighbors.

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/41Lebbeus_grandimanus_with_epicaridean-med.jpg