FW Isopod removal / recovery

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fishie111

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Dec 3, 2008
62
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New England
Hello all:

I'm planning to remove an isopod from under the operculum of one of my cichlids. My main concern is how to treat the fish after I remove it in order to prevent secondary infection.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.
 
There are several meds or just clean water and aquarium salt. If you can you post water perameters including PH and hardness I can make a sugesstion.
 
Thanks. I've set up a 10G hospital tank. The pH is about 7.5, KH is 71.6 ppm. My GH test was too hard to read, so I don't have a good estimate. Ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate are all 0 ppm (hospital tank is not cycled, I will have to do frequent water changes). All test results were from API liquid test kits. The temperature is 80 deg F.
 
Are you going to narcotize or anesthetize the fish? I've removed a bunch of those in flounder (I think they were Ergasilus), but there was more than 1 individual per fish so I put them to sleep with MS-222. Recovery was just a matter of keeping them as stress-free as possible.

Do you see male or female isopods? If you see a male, be prepared to look for females in the oral cavity. The females stay and the males travel around. God I hate the females. They embed themselves pretty deep in the tissue...and they make my skin crawl.
 
Ugh. I'm not sure, but I think there might be a male sticking out behind a female. I did order some MS-222 but I haven't gotten it yet. I was thinking it might be best to anesthetize so I can try to snip the legs of the isopod instead of just yanking it out. I am also considering seeing if I can weaken it with an organophosphate before removing it. Basically, I want to minimize the damage to the gill.
 
Yeah dude chop it to pieces! I hate those things
 
I'm definitely going to make sure it is very dead- from what I have read they are more than happy to bite the human that removes them, so I don't plan to give it a chance.
 
In your water API Triple sulfa would work good for the prevention of any secondary infections if you need somthing. Good luck with this.
 
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