[Non-Ceph]Shrimp Parasite?

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Sep 8, 2006
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Found one of my feeder shrimp has a relatively large "thing" attached to it. It's white, spherical, and appears to have black "legs" hooked into the shrimp. I'm not worried about the shrimp, but what are the chances of a parasitic isopod harming my octopus?

Considering it's on a shrimp I'm assuming there's little risk for my octopus but I'm no genius either. As a precaution the poor shrimp was removed.
 
I have no clue, but I added "Shrimp" to the title to better get the attention of anyone who knows. I'm thinking Roy may recognize it, since he works with stomatopods as well as cephs. Steve is frequently impressive at knowing that sort of thing, too, but he's otherwise occupied on the webcam!

this is the only crustacean parasite I know of, but that's more for its weirdness than because it's likely as an ID: Symbion - Wikipedia
 
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I have seen lots of black parasites on the Florida shore shrimp (it is rare to get a batch without them but this year has been better than last) but I don't remember any white attachments. I have been told by the vendor that they have never received any kind of problem complaint but I always remove the shrimp from the food tank and eliminate them.

Interestingly, I have found none on the ones Joe (and I helped) scouped up from the "back yard" in Charleston.
 
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Cool, I have been thinking about trying one for over a year but I am so hands on (in?) that I am not sure this is a critter for me. 'course it might teach me to keep my hands out of the tank :oops:

We picked up some live shrimp in Charleston (bait) that are from 2" - 3" for Octane and they are doing well in my son's 65 gallon tank and are really quite interesting to watch. One has been in 'Tanes tank for several days and he just kind of ignores it (he has eaten several others). Initially it buried itself but now it swims around a lot (more than the ones by themselves) and had to come up and investigate my hand when I was petting Octane. I kind of hope he doesn't eat it.
 
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