Hi,

I'm after some advice and the best course of action for a tank which contained shrimp with suspected Ellobiopsidae. There is plenty of information I have found about quarantining and attempted treatment of infected shrimp but I'm unsure on the course of action for the original tank.

Would it be best to completely tear down this tank and start again from scratch with completely new substrate, media etc meaning the parasite can lay dormant in these items waiting for a viable shrimp or can the parasite not survive without said host?

Would keeping an eye for any further infestation, quarantining any infected shrimp and the regular maintenance routine be enough so that the tank and colony can remain without a reboot? If so, are there any additional steps that should/can be taken in order to keep the existing colony and eco system running?

Apologies for the many questions and any help would be much appreciated.

Since "ellobiopsidae" aka "green fungus" aka "algae" can show up 3 or 6 months later, or even 2 years later, you either need to treat the entire tank and hope you eliminate it or or restart the tank with fresh blood. (new shrimp that are not from imports)

Thank you for the reply.

So I get that I will need to start again with fresh shrimp but can those shrimp go into the existing tank once all of the old colony have been removed? Is there any chance that the ellobiopsidae could harbour in any of the tank elements such as substrate and filter for example and therefore be introduced to the new shrimp?

5 hours ago, cbaum86 said:

an those shrimp go into the existing tank once all of the old colony have been removed?

cbaum,

remove ALL the shrimp with some existing tank water into a separate hospital tank or bucket temporarily. Don't forget an air stone for them.

Treat the old tank with parasitic medicine for 2 days. Stir the gravel to ensure the medicine gets into the gravel/substrate. Then remove all the water after 2 days and setup the tank again.

You can even overdose the treatment with no shrimp in it.

 

Anything with Formalin (Attention: carcinogenic and toxic!) will work.

Formalin & Malachite green combo off the shelf products include:

• Fritz Mardel QuICK Cure is one such product.
• Aquasonic has one too.
• Kordon Rid Ick Plus also uses the same ingredients.
• Seachem Paraguard

If you haven't read the Diseases and Diagnosis thread the link is 

I discuss Dinoflagellates and ellobiopsids in there.

Report back with your experiences in the treatment.

It's from my understanding that this is an algae, not fungus and not a parasite (at least not in the general terms of a parasitic animal... just a parasitic algae).

So anything that kills algae should, in theory, also kill this growth on shrimp. However, what kills algae also often kills shrimp. Everyone tends to have different different results with the various treatment methods out there...