Thick little yellowish wormlike creature swimming about after coral dip

[bitstream]

Was dipping Zoas in furan to deal with zoapox… saw this thing swimming about afterward. Any idea what it is?

It doesn’t wiggle. It’s about a half inch long, thick relative to its length, has two eyes, what look like antenna, and two small claw like arms it uses to swim. It stayed only on the surface.

Good guy? Bad guy?

Not sure how it got in there as the corals all were dipped with CoralRx, and some subsequently with iodine or furan depending on the ailment. Guessing it came from an egg?

I never saw this in the tank. Corals have been quarantining there for over 3 weeks and this came off the Zoas today.

 

[tzabor10]

Looks a bit like a pistol shrimp

 

[bitstream]

Looks a bit like a pistol shrimp

Hmm… possibly. In that coral dip dish it stayed on the surface, but maybe that’s because the chemicals weren’t exactly making for a hospitable environment.

What interests me is that I know the two stores I bought these corals from very well and their frag tanks only have fish in there to keep things clean. Their shrimp are kept in tanks entirely separate from the corals. So how it got there would be a huge mystery. These tanks are so clean that I’ve rarely seen any kind of worms on the corals I’ve bought at either place. At worst, I’ve had a couple feather dusters and some algae.

I think your theory could be sound, but this was young and undeveloped so it’s hard to tell what it really is.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Was dipping Zoas in furan to deal with zoapox… saw this thing swimming about afterward. Any idea what it is?

It doesn’t wiggle. It’s about a half inch long, thick relative to its length, has two eyes, what look like antenna, and two small claw like arms it uses to swim. It stayed only on the surface.

Good guy? Bad guy?

Not sure how it got in there as the corals all were dipped with CoralRx, and some subsequently with iodine or furan depending on the ailment. Guessing it came from an egg?

I never saw this in the tank. Corals have been quarantining there for over 3 weeks and this came off the Zoas today.

That's almost certainly a tanaid, though I'd need to see a side profile of it, a pic of the claws, and/or a closer up pic of the top of the tail to say for sure:

Tanaids are generally scavengers, eating detritus/herbivores, though a few eat worms and copepods;

 

[bitstream]

Looking at this thread where tanaid is mentioned, the pic looks the most similar to what my eyes saw: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/good-or-bad.301098/

What's wild is I pulled out two zoa frag discs and was handling them for awhile, popping the little pimples before dropping the discs into a furan bath, and I didn't see this sizable thing on the discs at all. It's not like the discs have hiding places for something this large, so when it appeared in the bowl it was a shock.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Looking at this thread where tanaid is mentioned, the pic looks the most similar to what my eyes saw: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/good-or-bad.301098/

What's wild is I pulled out two zoa frag discs and was handling them for awhile, popping the little pimples before dropping the discs into a furan bath, and I didn't see this sizable thing on the discs at all. It's not like the discs have hiding places for something this large, so when it appeared in the bowl it was a shock.

Yeah, the only other option I'm aware of for the critter in that thread is a Janiroidean isopod of some variety. Regardless, an easy way to tell for sure with yours is to see if it has crab-claw like pincers, or if it has raptorial appendages like mantis shrimp or praying mantises do. If it has crab-claws, it's a tanaid.

(Edit: to add, the pincers may be hard to see, but basically if the claw opens like scissors versus unfolding into a spear-like appendage, that's the difference.)

Some species burrow and others build little tubes to live in, so those could potentially help explain the hiding.

 

[bitstream]

Yeah, the only other option I'm aware of for the critter in that thread is a Janiroidean isopod of some variety. Regardless, an easy way to tell for sure with yours is to see if it has crab-claw like pincers, or if it has raptorial appendages like mantis shrimp or praying mantises do. If it has crab-claws, it's a tanaid.

(Edit: to add, the pincers may be hard to see, but basically if the claw opens like scissors versus unfolding into a spear-like appendage, that's the difference.)

Some species burrow and others build little tubes to live in, so those could potentially help explain the hiding.

This was definitely a juvenile as the clawlike appendages were barely formed/visible. To my eyes they looked like a very slender arm with 3 fingers. It does look most like a tanaid. The reason I don't think it's a pistol shrimp is due to how uniform the body is.

This guy came from a 3 gallon coral quarantine tank that has a dusting of coarse sand to coat the bottom, so there's no place you could possibly burrow and there are no tubes in the tank, definitely nothing big enough for a creature this size. It probably hid under a frag disc and somehow escaped detection for weeks as it grew.