hydriods
 

so i have both the free swimming stick to the glass type hydriods, plus the brown rock hydriods. seeing as there is not much solid info on them, does anyone have experiance? i have been reading the glass ones are harmless

depending on where it comes from it can be harmful :) and VERY hard to get rid of.

I have a system that I used to have upside down jellyfish, now hydroids are everywhere tank raised upside down jellyfish LOL

I ended up boiling and baking the rock I had colonials in. I tried the regular mentions, paste, juice blah.... i even was using blow torch to burn them off every once and while but they kept coming back

The digitated ones ( long stringy things) dont seem to harm anythign in the tank so I have just left them alone.. they seem to be decreasing on their own for whatever reason.

I have tried the blow torch thing too. Worked for a while, but they come back from the same place in the rock. After I find a really big syringe I am going to try boiling water.

Fluke Tabs one capsule per 100 gallons but it will wipe out all sorties and shrimp.

What corals will a fluke tab harm?
I have hydroids growing on the base rock of my suncoral and need to nuke them somehow.

How can you tell the difference between hydroids and brown polyps? Is there an easy way?

I think I have some hydroids. I'll take pics tomorrow when I get up (it's 4:50 am and I'm still Googling), along with dinos again and a couple of aptasia. Just shoot me now. :shocked!:

hydroids
 

i have hundreds of them.seems to have come from my brine shrimp,as they are now in my gobie breeding tank.i am now raising upside down jellyfish.my bannerfish seems to like eating them-or at least tearing them apart

I used to have the brown kind on my rocks covering everything. Every so often I'd scrape them off but they go deep into the rocks so it's difficult to control that way. You can try covering/smothering them in epoxy (you can always remove the epoxy later).

Mine started to disappear after I got a potter's angel. I have read somewhere that pygmy angels can sometimes eat them, although I never saw it happen - but something caused them to disappear. So, if a pygmy (dwarf) angel is something you wanted and can fit in your tank and you've just been waiting for the right excuse to get one - here you go. :)

I had an outbreak in my tank a little while back. Purchased an aiptasia eating filefish (I just like them) and the hydroids went away. I'm not sure if it's related, as i've read they can just "go away" by themselves.

A couple days late but here they are:

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/a..._7320_web1.jpg

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/a..._7319_web1.jpg

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/a..._7318_web1.jpg

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/a..._7317_web1.jpg

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/a..._7324_web1.jpg

Any thoughts on what I've got plaguing my tank? Is this hydroids? ~help~

Thank you in advance for your advice!

Yes most assuredly those are hydroids. Looks the same as what I had anyhow.

Any suggestions on the best plan of attack since they are wide-spread throughout the tank? I can't epoxy everything. :sad:

Probably 2-3 days away from having my parameters right to do my second 3 day black-out for the dinos too.

Getting put through my paces with this tank lately. Trying to stay positive though. Every challenge is a learning opportunity, right? Right....

:cry:

Hang in there, it can be challenging. I find things go in cycles, things are great, things are lousy, things are great, things are lousy .. the low points make the high points that much sweeter maybe? I dunno.

Is a pygmy (dwarf) angel an option for you? A flame angel perhaps or a potter's? Or you can try the filefish like monocus suggested, the only hesitation with those are they can be prone to eating other things you rather they didn't (ie., blastomussa's, acan's, other LPS, zoanthids..). USUALLY they are pretty well behaved but .............. . The other thing to watch for with filefish is they jump. Looking at them you'd think they weren't prone to jumping but they are.

What I have in the tank right now:

Yellow tang
Blue cheek trigger
2 false per clowns
Exquisite and canary wrasse
coral banded shrimp
cleaner shrimp
conch
2 halloween hermit crabs and a blue legged hermit crab
pompom crab
various snails

Corals: hammer head, anthelia, zenia, zoanthids, open brain, trumpet, duncan, yellow polys, brown polyps (don't know the name), a couple acros, a couple plating montiporas, and a birdsnest. (I think that's it)

Being "new", I'm not sure what would all be compatible with that.

Tried putting a peppermint shrimp in the other night for the 5 or so tiny aptasia I have in the tank and it lasted all of 10 minutes maybe. The 2 wrasses had a feeding frenzy. I couldn't even watch it was too savage. They didn't even say thanks for the entre, LOL.

Not too worried about jumpers. We have a pexiglass cover that covers almost the whole tank. We did it when we were under construction and just never took it off. Seems to be working ok. Our trigger is a jumper but he has been kept in so far (knock on wood).

Thanks for all your advice and encouragement. I needed "the boost". Much appreciated!

hydroids
 

it looks like you have aptasia-nothing like my hydroids.i'm getting upside down jelly fish from mine.the end of the stalk(pollup) pulses on mine.they eventually break off and i get upside down jellyfish.try prodding the head.if it retracts into itself you have aptasia

The third picture in particular (the side profile), there's no doubt those are hydroids. I guess some of the others could be small aiptasia but they don't usually stay small like that for very long and end up being unmistakably anemones (if they were). These look like the same hydroids I had. For what it's worth, they never really bothered anything but they just looked fugly. They started dwindling on their own after I added a potter's angel to my mix. Whether that's coincidence or not I can't say but I did read somewhere that pygmy angels might eat them. I'll see if I can find the link.

First thing I thought with the polyp things was aptasia too. However, they are growing outward (spreading) like a carpet on the most part. I definitely do have a few new aptasia though. I count 5 that are obvious. In the same time frame they individually have grown larger, maybe 2-3x the size of each of the little polyps you see in the pics and definitely retract. I haven't tried touching the little guys though. I am going in to clean all the powerheads, etc. before the blackout (for dinos) so I'll check it out and let you know. Maybe I'll grab a couple of pics of the aptasia too so it's easier to compare them against each other.

I'll look into the compatibility of the angel in my tank. I'd much rather have a nice looking fish control the issue than me have to deal with it manually. :biggrin:

The hydroids I had looked alot like the 3rd pic as well. The stems are very firm. I was able to peel off carpet like pieces at a time.

Ok, dinos seem to be non-existent (once again, YAY!) so ready to attack the hydroids. Anyone with experience doing the epoxy? I have small patches of these on almost every rock in the tank. It will be an extensive job.
I'm full of questions:

• Should I do one rock at a time or start replacing the live rock in my tank?
• Doing one rock at a time will be a lengthy process and I will have to dismantle my whole rock work. Have any of you done this successfully? Any issues arise?
• Should I do it over a couple of days for less trama to the live stock?
• What brand of epoxy did you use?
• How long to leave it outside the tank before returning it to the water?

Here we go for a ride on the crazy train, LOL.

Bump. :)

Thank you in advance!

I never did try the epoxy trick so I'm not sure. If I was to do that though I'd only do a few patches at a time. The underwater epoxy is not always the nicest to work with (it's more of a putty than an actual adhesive). I could see this getting kind of expensive since even the cheap epoxy is still like $10 per tube.

Sorry I wish I had better experience to draw on. All I really know is that shortly after adding a potter's angel, the hydroids started to disappear. I had also read that pygmy angels (any of the Centropyge sp. angels) will nip at hydroids so I still think that might be worth a shot for you.

Those are hydroids for sure...
upside down jelly fish??

Hydroids will also retract when you touch their "crown"

I have tried every trick in the book to rid my tank of these as they do sting some corals and can grow prolifically.

NOTHING works though.
The epoxy trick might work if you have 1 localized patch of them but in my experience, they just grow through or around the epoxy in little time.
now I just suck it up.