# Ellobiopsis sp. / that weird green parasite, do we have a cure?



## Zoidburg (Mar 8, 2016)

Aquatic Arts. They sell imported shrimp.


This is why it's highly recommended to purchase USA bred shrimp.


No definite cure yet... Chaz at Elevate Shrimp seems to have the best results so far of treating the parasite. He has a food to feed to the shrimp. It's not on his website so you'll have to contact him privately to get a hold of it.


Otherwise, you could try a Potassium Permanganate dip. I don't know if the Jungle Aqua PP is good enough to use it (everyone says it kills snails! In my experience, it doesn't...), but PP can be purchased from other manufacturers. All I know is to make the water a pink-ish color and then "bathe" the shrimp in it.



Beyond that, it's really hit or miss. I can't even guarantee if the PP will do the trick or not...


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## aotf (Dec 19, 2016)

Heh, cat's out of the bag, I guess.

I hunted around for a good vendor for a while and I really felt like (based off of their website and others' interactions with them) they care about their animals, their customers, and their service. I'm not saying those things aren't true but unfortunately they don't matter that much if they are shipping out shrimp with a parasite that can slowly kill all the shrimp in your host tank. Didn't know they imported...

I'll see if I can find what Chaz has to say. Thanks for the tip!

As you pointed out, it really seems hit or miss and I'm pretty unexcited at the prospect of loading up on a bunch of chemicals (formalin, pp, paraguard, keep 'em coming!) just to have my shrimp die. *sigh* Comes with the hobby, I guess.


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## Zoidburg (Mar 8, 2016)

Unfortunately, yes.

I've heard both good and bad things about Aquatic Arts. At least, as far as customer support goes. Generally, they've been good, it just sucks that the shrimp they sell have the potential to wipe out an entire colony.


The only purchase I've made from them was 2 moss balls off of Amazon and I received 3, so my minimal interaction with the company has been good. (prior to knowing about the parasite issue) I wont buy shrimp from them, though!



I'm actually tempted to get a "colony" of 'sick shrimp' with the parasite and try out different cures. Just, kind of hard to find said shrimp when the people who have them wont sell them as such....


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## Jeffww (Aug 6, 2010)

Try metronidazole. It is an anti-protist drug. Available from seachem. Dose at recommended. Note that I am not really a shrimp keeper or a vet. But I have used this drug very successfully in treating my koi with protist infection. Pretty much have nothing to lose imo.


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## aotf (Dec 19, 2016)

My experience in regards to customer service has been quite good. 

I ordered 5 red rili, 5 value rili, and 5 zebra thorn snails Thursday or Friday of last week. To my pleasant surprise, I received them this Thursday, and they gave me 6 of each! Better yet, all the shrimp survived (the jury is still out on the snails, some are taking it sloww).

So from that perspective, I think they did a great job. You know, with that one huge caveat.

I would be happy to hand off my infected shrimp if you were local but there's a good chance I would manage to kill it in shipping though since there's only one for now and I've never shipped live shrimp. 
Looks like I'll have to try it myself! I have some salt and Paraguard on the way, I'll do some research on PP as well.


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## Jeffww (Aug 6, 2010)

After skimming some literature, metronidazole seems effective in killing other aveolate protozoan parasites. I honestly think this is your best treatment.


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## Zoidburg (Mar 8, 2016)

assofthefist said:


> My experience in regards to customer service has been quite good.
> 
> I ordered 5 red rili, 5 value rili, and 5 zebra thorn snails Thursday or Friday of last week. To my pleasant surprise, I received them this Thursday, and they gave me 6 of each! Better yet, all the shrimp survived (the jury is still out on the snails, some are taking it sloww).
> 
> ...


I'm only 4 hours away... but not a clue when I'll be heading your way!


Generally speaking though, most places when you order 10 shrimp, you actually receive 12, maybe 13. This is kind of an "insurance policy" kind of thing... i.e. if any die in shipping, you'll have an extra one or two to cover the loss.

Except for one place. They sell you exactly what you ordered... lol



Best of luck!


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## aotf (Dec 19, 2016)

Jeffww said:


> After skimming some literature, metronidazole seems effective in killing other aveolate protozoan parasites. I honestly think this is your best treatment.


Hah, looks like I'll add this to my salty Paraguard treatment. Thanks for the tip!



Zoidburg said:


> I'm only 4 hours away... but not a clue when I'll be heading your way!


I wonder if a vendor with an ellobiopsidae problem would be interested in sending you _specifically_ infected shrimp since they're unsellable to them and it could generate useful knowledge for them and the community at large.



Zoidburg said:


> Generally speaking though, most places when you order 10 shrimp, you actually receive 12, maybe 13.


Yeah, I know it's typical but it's still very nice to receive extra shrimp with no DOAs.


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## Zoidburg (Mar 8, 2016)

Someone else already tried asking vendors for the sick shrimp... and they didn't get anywhere with that...


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## aotf (Dec 19, 2016)

While checking my quarantined shrimp tonight, I noticed it *ALSO* has scutariella. 

COME. ON.

Luckily, this is much easier to treat. BUT COME ON.

Bump:


Jeffww said:


> After skimming some literature, metronidazole seems effective in killing other aveolate protozoan parasites. I honestly think this is your best treatment.


Ordered! I know you're not a shrimp dude but I'll keep this thread updated with any developments.


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## shrimplife (Feb 1, 2017)

with ANY IMPORTER, not just the one mentioned, these shrimp all all bred overseas in conditions and colonies where these diseases exist. Even if you get shrimp that appear normal, they still may exhibit the disease days-weeks after you put them in your tank. Its best to buy home bred shrimp. Quality control comes from the homebred shrimp. I never bring imported shrimp into my shrimp room. When I was a newbie, each time they would die off 1 by 1 (with no visible symptoms but this is also common with imports and also show various diseases which resulted in death or trying to manage the diseases. Save yourself some time and money and find a home breeder who can help you out. Over the last 2 years have managed to collect over 20+ types of shrimp that were all homebred. 

Cheers!


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## Jeffww (Aug 6, 2010)

Any update?


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## aotf (Dec 19, 2016)

shrimplife said:


> with ANY IMPORTER, not just the one mentioned, these shrimp all all bred overseas in conditions and colonies where these diseases exist. Even if you get shrimp that appear normal, they still may exhibit the disease days-weeks after you put them in your tank. Its best to buy home bred shrimp. Quality control comes from the homebred shrimp. I never bring imported shrimp into my shrimp room. When I was a newbie, each time they would die off 1 by 1 (with no visible symptoms but this is also common with imports and also show various diseases which resulted in death or trying to manage the diseases. Save yourself some time and money and find a home breeder who can help you out. Over the last 2 years have managed to collect over 20+ types of shrimp that were all homebred.
> 
> Cheers!


Yup, learned a lesson here, will probably just try to buy from some local home-breeders next time around.

I'm going to wait like 6 months to see if I have any outbreaks and then if things are going well, I might try to help out some newbies like myself with some home-grown rilis 
Last thing I want to do is give the parasite to someone else, though, so caution and patience will be key.



Jeffww said:


> Any update?


I've been doing nightly salt + Paraguard dips and dosing with metronidazole every day, the shrimp in question seems to be doing pretty well despite the heavy-handed treatments. Overall, I'm still seeing signs of the ellobiopsis (hence the lack of an update) but it is not spreading and may even show signs of improvement.

Assuming this is an effective treatment, I will wait until the parasite is no longer visible then continue treatment for probably a month before reintroducing it into the main tank (if we make it that far). 

At this point, I just don't have the heart to cull the shrimp so I'm doing my best to treat it. That said, this is not a quick fix and isn't a great option for more than a couple shrimp unless you're desperately trying to preserve a breeding group from an infected colony. It's entirely possible that directly treating the water column would be more effective but I've heard mixed things about Paraguard and inverts so I'm sticking to the dips for now.


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## Aquatic Arts (Dec 27, 2016)

*Aquatic Arts*

Hey Everybody,

I actually posted a statement about this in my sponsor forum yesterday, but the mod hasn't approved it yet. I'll go ahead and copy and paste it here for now:

"First, let me say that it is true we had a recent outbreak of scutareilla japonica (commonly misidentified as vorticella). Thankfully, this infection is very easy to treat with invert-safe medication. Our policy for this situation has been a 100% refund to any affected customer (even if it was only one shrimp out of 20), and we have sent the requisite medication to treat the infection. We do rely on customers to let us know when this happens, since the infection was contained to only some species and only some holding tanks. We use closed systems for every one of our 200+ tanks, so it didn’t spread too far before we caught it. If any of our customers has been affected by this issue, we want you to contact us so we can help you fix it. 

Since the scutareilla japonica is exceptionally easy to treat and that problem has been dealt with on our end, I want to move on to the “green fungus” issue. We import many of our neocaridina, and this is an extremely common problem with any imported shrimp. Because of this recent outbreak (of scutareilla japonica) and several past problems with the fungus, we have put our supplier on notice that we will be setting up our own domestic breeding facility if they cannot completely solve the problem on their end. We are their largest customer (and the largest retail shrimp supplier in the world), so they are now taking the issue very seriously. It’s been extremely frustrating (and expensive in terms of refunds and our reputation), but the silver lining to this is that our supplier is taking serious steps to resolve this once and for all, and we are working in collaboration with 2 universities (one domestic and one in Taiwan) to devise a shrimp-safe treatment for the “green fungus” that has become so common in imported neocaridina. Additionally, we have collected every forum thread we can find where people recommend not buying imported shrimp for these reasons, and will send this document to every neocaridina farm in Taiwan so they understand this is an existential threat to their business. There have been some scattered reports of treatment options, but so far none of them have been viable to use on a large scale. Because we have such an interest in resolving this issue, I have put up a $20,000 reward to the biology departments of the two aforementioned universities that will be awarded if they can help us devise a treatment for the green fungus that is viable for farms in Taiwan to implement, and there is now a concerted effort by biologists to solve this problem. This is great news for the hobby, because despite the scattered issues with infections of their shrimp, nobody will argue that Taiwan produces shrimp of incredible quality and continues to lead the hobby in the development and refinement of new color morphs.

All that aside, we understand this has also been extremely frustrating for many of our customers. Until this issue is completely resolved, we are taking several extra steps (including a mandatory quarantine period on both our supplier’s end and our end) to make sure no more of our customers are affected. We expect it won’t be long until this issue is solved not just for us, but for the hobby in general. Once we have a solution, we will be voluntarily sharing it with any farm that wants the information, as well as hobbyists in the United States. This information would be extremely valuable to the farms in Taiwan, but we will be giving it out for free as a donation of sorts to the hobby as a whole.

I do want to point out here as well that despite the increased reports of issues with our neocaridina lately, it should be kept in mind that we have over 200,000 individual customers that have bought shrimp from us, and we sell 15,000 shrimp on our website alone (about 85% of our sales) during an average month. I don’t bring this up to boast, but to give a sense of proportionality for the recent issues we have had. The vast majority of our customers have been extremely happy with our company, and we have an extremely high rate of customers that return to order again for our industry. I am fairly certain that we have introduced more people to the shrimp hobby than any other person or company worldwide. We understand that not every customer that has been affected by this has contacted us, but even if we assume that only 25% of them contacted us about this at any point in the last 2 years (very conservative), that puts our problem rate at less than 0.01% across the life of our business. Since I started the company, Aquatic Arts has grown from a 55 gallon tank I kept in my apartment to a business that employs 13 people (11 full time). I have learned a lot since I started this company 3 years ago, and despite the amount of experience I’ve amassed running this company, I still hesitate to describe myself as an expert with so much still to learn. I suppose it sounds corny, but I see these problems as an opportunity for improvement rather than a drastic setback, despite the financial impact it has had. It’s actually great in a way to think about how far we still have to go to meet our own standards, and it wouldn’t be happening this fast if not for the diligence of the shrimp-keeping community.

That being said, I do want to personally apologize for any of our customers that have been affected by this problem, and I don’t want to come across as minimizing the issue for those that have been affected. As I mentioned before, we want you to contact us about this so we can help you fix it. Although this issue started with our supplier, I take personal responsibility for this issue, as we should have caught it before this many of our customers were affected. This has certainly been a wake-up call for both myself and my supplier. I know it’s not much consolation at this point, but I hope that my contribution toward ending this problem in the hobby as a whole will provide some measure of satisfaction, and that the hobby as a whole will be better for it a few months from now. Regardless of the outcome with our supplier for neocaridina, we have accelerated our plans to move into a 15,000+ sq/ft warehouse and set up a serious breeding facility for neocaridina in the United States. That will happen sometime this summer, and I expect the breeding project to come to fruition late fall or early winter. At that point, high quality shrimp bred right here in the USA will be available at the same or lower cost than what we provide now, and we also plan to provide these shrimp at wholesale cost to local stores that are interested in carrying USA bred crustaceans. That’s exciting for me, because I certainly miss the days when every shrimp we sold was bred by myself.

In regard to the fungus issue in particular, we would love for anyone that has successfully treated it to reach out. We have collected what information was available and passed it along to the biology departments we are working with, but more information may help. We will continue to update you all about any progress that is made. We are also paying for any infected shrimp (regardless of whether or not they came from us) so that we can acquire more samples for the lab. If you have an infected colony, we will actually buy a sizeable number of visibly infected shrimp as well as pay the shipping cost.

I know this has been a long read, but thanks for getting this far. We appreciate all the feedback (both positive and negative), and the diligence of fellow hobbyists in solving this mystery for all of us. 

David
Owner – Aquatic Arts"


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## aotf (Dec 19, 2016)

Aquatic Arts said:


> many words


 @Aquatic Arts

Hi David,

Somehow this slipped by me and I never noticed you posted on my thread until now.
I had the opportunity to read your post elsewhere as well and I want to thank you for the explanation.
I think it's easy to feel burned as customer receiving shrimp with a parasite because we are never exposed to the types of problems that arise when scaling up to a commercial venture, so hearing about the flip side provides an important perspective. We also easily forget that it is thanks to people like you that we even have access to these shrimp in the first place. Without importers and commercial invert retailers, there would be no shrimp hobby stateside.

It's also great to hear about your efforts to solve the problems currently inherent to importing these critters.

Thanks for the hard work and I wish you the best!


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## clownplanted (Mar 3, 2017)

Very much subscribed to this. To OP did you end up curing your infected shrimp?


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## KleineVampir (Aug 29, 2017)

My shrimp are apparently afflicted with Ellobiopsis, but...while that's probably the case...Is it possible that it's just algae growth? I leave my little LED plant light on for about 16 hours a day! Does that ever happen with dwarf shrimp?


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## aotf (Dec 19, 2016)

clownplanted said:


> Very much subscribed to this. To OP did you end up curing your infected shrimp?


I did! I originally started this thread in March so it's been a little while, but with daily dosing of metronidazole and daily paraguard and salt dips, I managed to cure the infected shrimp in a little over a week and a half. I kept him quarantined for another couple weeks and the symptoms did not return, after which I moved him to the main tank. It was a lot of work for a single shrimp but I figured it was worth trying out because I didn't have the heart to cull him and I was curious to see if I could cure him.

I necroposted after noticing David's response while double-checking information on this thread while doing a little research for KleineVampir.




KleineVampir said:


> My shrimp are apparently afflicted with Ellobiopsis, but...while that's probably the case...Is it possible that it's just algae growth? I leave my little LED plant light on for about 16 hours a day! Does that ever happen with dwarf shrimp?


I'm no expert but I've never heard of shrimp growing algae on their swimmerets. Shrimp will clean themselves regularly so that strikes me as very unlikely. I'm happy to take a look at other pictures (I saw the ones in your main thread) but I suspect it is indeed ellobiopsidae. Sorry for the bad news!


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## KleineVampir (Aug 29, 2017)

aotf said:


> I did! I originally started this thread in March so it's been a little while, but with daily dosing of metronidazole and daily paraguard and salt dips, I managed to cure the infected shrimp in a little over a week and a half. I kept him quarantined for another couple weeks and the symptoms did not return, after which I moved him to the main tank. It was a lot of work for a single shrimp but I figured it was worth trying out because I didn't have the heart to cull him and I was curious to see if I could cure him.
> 
> I necroposted after noticing David's response while double-checking information on this thread while doing a little research for KleineVampir.
> 
> ...


Ok that's a good point. There is mention of algae growth on shrimps in the shrimp disease handbook thing. But those are bigger shrimp and probably considerably different. Anyways thanks for researching just for little old me!

It occurs to me that these shrimp may or may not make it, and they might even not be worth it (in a way), but it has experimental value for other shrimpers out there. Our successes and failures could help save other shrimp with this problem!


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## aotf (Dec 19, 2016)

Zoidburg said:


> I'm actually tempted to get a "colony" of 'sick shrimp' with the parasite and try out different cures. Just, kind of hard to find said shrimp when the people who have them wont sell them as such....





KleineVampir said:


> It occurs to me that these shrimp may or may not make it, and they might even not be worth it (in a way), but it has experimental value for other shrimpers out there. Our successes and failures could help save other shrimp with this problem!


I don't know if you're interested in shipping shrimp --if that's even a possibility for you-- or if @Zoidburg actually wants a colony of these things, but no harm in checking >

If not, best of luck with treatment! From an economic perspective, no it's not worth it to save these shrimp. But I kind of saw it as a challenge and I just couldn't let mine die knowing that I could at least _try_ to save him.


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## freshtanks15 (Sep 27, 2015)

Aquatic Arts is the only place Ive ordered from that had multiple DOAs in each order, hardly any juvies and shrimp with parasites. This was late 2015 -begining of 2016, I spent about $200 on shrimp and most died within 2 weeks...even the 1(only) replacement order. Never had a DOA or parasites with orders from hobbyist that home bred their shrimp (or quarantined them) and the shrimp are still living and breeding. Aquatic Arts have shrimp I want that others dont have now but not worth the hassle. Orders from lucas bretz (lrbretzaquatics) or Hanaquatics have been healthy, thriving shrimp.

Sent from my QTAIR7 using Tapatalk


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## Brian Rodgers (Oct 15, 2016)

Not sure this is helpful or appropriate to TPT sponsors, I have no affiliation with https://flipaquatics.com/ and have never bought shrimp, although I am certainly looking forward to starting a shrimp tank. I'm subscribed to several wonderful aquarium youtube channels and Flip Aquatics is one of them. I was amazed to see how shrimp are raised and find their videos enlightening.


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## KleineVampir (Aug 29, 2017)

The cherries I got from "the shrimp farm" were amazing and disease free. All alive on arrival and all survived going into the tank without acclimation!

Anyways, I have a question involving ellobiopsis. I used to have shrimp in a quarantine tank with some java moss. Do you guys think the java moss is safe to go into my regular tank? I can't shake the feeling that I'm putting them at a decent amount of risk by doing so. I just blasted it with a crapload of paraguard and I'm contemplating moving it to my regular tank.


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## Zoidburg (Mar 8, 2016)

I don't know how long ellobiopsidae can live without a host... but if you've never seen it in 3-6+ months, chances are, you'll probably be fine.


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## KleineVampir (Aug 29, 2017)

Zoidburg said:


> I don't know how long ellobiopsidae can live without a host... but if you've never seen it in 3-6+ months, chances are, you'll probably be fine.


Yeah. Strange that little is known about this. So you're saying don't put it in my tank for a good while. Yeah I think I'll move it somewhere else and it can just get a little sunlight elsewhere. It's such an eyesore looking at this little tank full of moss and gross water!


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