How to Rid of Sea Lice on my Tank?

[Nurse.Reef.Reapeat]

So I set-up a 10 gallon saltwater tank, used dry sand but bought live rocks sourced from Florida. Everything went well until after I added the clownfish. I see there are 1 attached to one fish and 2 on the other. I turned off the light and observed the lice swimming. Man I was so ticked, but I’m glad I caught it sooner. I manually removed it from the fishes and moved the clowns to another tank. Now back to the DT, I see them swimming. I want to get rid of it without removing the live rocks. Please help!

 

[thedon986]

It sounds like these are cirolanid isopods. I had some with my gulf Florida life rock. I haven’t seen any for a long time. I think eventually they will die off. Here is some reading on methods to catch them. Definitely freaked me out when I saw them in the morning on my fish. From what I have read they are not very harmful though.

https://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-02/bp/index.php

 

[Nurse.Reef.Reapeat]

Thank you so much for this. It freaked me out. So they will go away on their own? I will re-introduce my clowns later after they die?

 

[sc50964]

I encountered sea lice 18 years ago. I used Prazipro and it didn’t work. Since then, I have not had the need but have heard that there are just two ways that a normal hobbyist can do. One is to remove by hand. The other is to use hydrogen peroxide 3% bath. Both will be stressful to the fish and the operator so there isn’t a good and easy solution.

 

[Jekyl]

Can you please try and get some photos or a video? I'll tag someone who might be able to help you out.
@ISpeakForTheSeas

 

[Jay Hemdal]

So I set-up a 10 gallon saltwater tank, used dry sand but bought live rocks sourced from Florida. Everything went well until after I added the clownfish. I see there are 1 attached to one fish and 2 on the other. I turned off the light and observed the lice swimming. Man I was so ticked, but I’m glad I caught it sooner. I manually removed it from the fishes and moved the clowns to another tank. Now back to the DT, I see them swimming. I want to get rid of it without removing the live rocks. Please help!

Sounds like Cirolanid isopods to me. Some species are considered “micro-predators” of fish. There is no safe treatment for these though.

Some people trap them, others siphon them out. I’m not convinced that populations of these just don’t die out in their own though. There was a public aquarium in Europe though, that had a long term problem with these isopods, I’m unsure why.

Arthropod Parasites of Aquarium Fish - Hemdal

Parasitic Crustaceans (Copepods, Isopods, and Sea Lice) Jay Hemdal c.2020 This is an excerpt from my upcoming fish disease book - a section on arthropod parasites of fish; isopods and copepods. ------------------ Cause This disease problem is...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Thank you so much for this. It freaked me out. So they will go away on their own? I will re-introduce my clowns later after they die?

They generally do die out on their own, but it seems it may depend on the exact species; as mentioned in the ReefKeeping.com article above, they sometimes reproduce even in tanks without fish (thankfully it's not common though), so some species may be facultative detritivores/carrion-feeders or able to feed on other critters that come in with live rock (such as other pods, worms, tunicates, etc.).

Anyway, yeah, remove any on the fish, and if you want to try removing as many in the display as possible, there's not really any harm in doing so as long as you don't just leave food in there for them indefinitely - like the article (which covered most of the removal methods available) mentioned, pull any bait before leaving the tank for an extended duration.

 

[Nurse.Reef.Reapeat]

I was able to capture few shots of one of them that I removed from my clownfish.

 

[sc50964]

Nasty looking bugger

 

[thedon986]

Those look like the ones I had that haven’t shown up in many months. All white with the two black eyes. The stinky bottle bait trap didn’t work for me. I netted a few just after lights out, they start to swim around to look for fish.

 

[Nurse.Reef.Reapeat]

I might have to use a bait for it, then remove it.