How to avoid hitchhikers?

[Shelby2012]

I visited one lfs today. I was interested mostly in cuc so I found one store with quite a large selection of snails, crabs, etc. However, in one tank, each snail had at least 2-3 very small, fast moving kind of worms on the shell. My tank is not ready yet for the cuc so I was not going to purchase anything but those snails seems to have hitchhikers on their backs! Did you experience anything like this when buying cuc from an online retailer? While those worms were easy to spot, what about the ones you can't see with a naked eye? I didn't use live rock to avoid any potential hitchhikers so I wouldn't like to get them now with the livestock.

 

[Dozerman]

Hitchhikers are (almost) never good. If you see something and don't know what it is, chances are you don't want it in your tank. The only way to truly avoid all hitchhikers is to quarantine everything you put in your tank. Everything. Fish, snails, live rock, corals, inverts, everything. Honestly I don't personally know of anyone that does this. Take reasonable care with corals and inverts, don't put the lfs water in your tank, look closely for any signs of pests on corals, dip them in something like CoralRx to be safe, defiantly quarantine all fish.
But yes, if you see something on a snail, and you don't know what it is, skip it. Anything to treat pests would also kill the snail (and any other inverts most likely).

 

[shred5]

Well I used dead rock (Marco and some old rock I had) to set up my tank and added what I wanted to the tank like copepods etc..

 

[btkrausen]

Here ya go...straight from LiveAquaria:

Helpful Tips for Controlling Unwanted Pests:
Submerse the new rock into a bucket filled with saltwater with a specific gravity of 1.035 to 1.040 for one minute. Any invertebrates including mantis shrimp, bristle worms, and crabs will quickly evacuate from the rock and into the bucket of water.


Remove the live rock from the bucket and sort through the invertebrates in the bucket. Determine those you want to add to your system and discard unwanted pests. Bristle worms still attached to the rock can be removed with a pair of needle-nosed pliers or tweezers. This technique can be used to remove unwanted pests before or after curing your newly arrived live rock.

 

[Shelby2012]

Great info Btkrausen but is there any way to remove unwanted pests from snails, inverts? probably not. In case of snails, those pests may be on the shell as in the case I spotted but is there any other place I should check before taking snails home?