EXTERMINATING Colonial hydroids !!!
- Thread starter r_g
- Start date
sublime9182
Member
+1 My first frag had some once they started growing I just took that whole rock out and I haven't seen any since.
I've got patches of them... not quite that large, but definitely that thick, and have had them for years. I really haven't found they bother anything. Some of them are growing right next to corals and don't seem to cause issues. In fact, the corals just spread over them and seem to kill them off as they need to.
Now with that said, if I had the opportunity to remove the rock they're on and deal with them outside the tank, I would. (But I don't.) Looks like you could easily remove that rock and get them off.
I've also dealt with mine by grabbing large tufts of them with my big tweezers and just twisting them off the rock. Gotta grab them near the base and have a siphon handy to catch the debris that isn't in your tweezers. You can also cover small patches at a time with kalk paste, just as you'd treat aiptasia.
Now with that said, if I had the opportunity to remove the rock they're on and deal with them outside the tank, I would. (But I don't.) Looks like you could easily remove that rock and get them off.
I've also dealt with mine by grabbing large tufts of them with my big tweezers and just twisting them off the rock. Gotta grab them near the base and have a siphon handy to catch the debris that isn't in your tweezers. You can also cover small patches at a time with kalk paste, just as you'd treat aiptasia.
dja1980
Active member
I've run into a few posts mentioning a product called Hydroxs as a whole tank treatment. I don't have any experience with this, but it might be worth looking into...
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2420151&highlight=hydroxs
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2420151&highlight=hydroxs
About 3 weeks ago I got a small piece of live rock. I got a good size Zoa that I wanted to put in it to fill out a hole in the LR reef.
2 weeks later, I noticed some small brown critters that emerged from the rock that looked like fan worms. At first I was excited and not worried about it.
Then as the weeks went, the critters started to multiply. I did some searching and found out, to my horror, that they are hydroids! All the advice I read pretty much have the same message: get them out QUICK!
So, I had to pull the rock and did my best to salvage the Zoas as much as I could without including any of the pest.
Here is what they looked like. I just hope I got all of them out. I discarded the rock just to be safe. The hydroids in the front were the first to come out, and t here were only like 5 of them then. AS you can see, they quickly multiplied all over the rock ( middle and back)
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2 weeks later, I noticed some small brown critters that emerged from the rock that looked like fan worms. At first I was excited and not worried about it.
Then as the weeks went, the critters started to multiply. I did some searching and found out, to my horror, that they are hydroids! All the advice I read pretty much have the same message: get them out QUICK!
So, I had to pull the rock and did my best to salvage the Zoas as much as I could without including any of the pest.
Here is what they looked like. I just hope I got all of them out. I discarded the rock just to be safe. The hydroids in the front were the first to come out, and t here were only like 5 of them then. AS you can see, they quickly multiplied all over the rock ( middle and back)
This seems to have worked for me.
This seems to have worked for me.
I realize this is an old post, but maybe this may help some browsing. I have had hydroids gaining control of my tank for the last year. I would pick the rocks til I was blue in the face. It always came back. My cleanup crew would not touch it. turbos, blue legs, peps, none of them would pay any mind.
A while back I had a hair algae problem and thats when I got my turbos, which ate almost every bit of the hair algae, but I still had some growing in odd places that they could not get, so I bought a product called "chem-marin algae stop". It killed off the remaining hair algae in about a week and I had not used any since.
Well after pulling out lots of hair dealing with the hydroids, I thought I would try it on a patch of them. I turned the pump off, covered a 1 inch patch and let it sit for about half an hour. turned the pump back on and went to sleep. Next day, that same 1 inch patch seems to have been thinned out. That evening I noticed 3 blue legs were on top of the patch of hydroids I had treated, munching away at them. I turned the pump off and tried another patch the same way as a couple nights prior. Next morning both areas I had treated, hydroids gone!!!!! Did the whole tank over the next week or so and happy to say they are gone for now.
I cant say if the algae stop did the trick and the blue legs just cleaned up the dead or if the algae stop was like putting a condiment on to the hydroids giving the blue legs a tasty treat.
If you've exhausted all else, give it a try. Hope it helps some of you.
This seems to have worked for me.
I realize this is an old post, but maybe this may help some browsing. I have had hydroids gaining control of my tank for the last year. I would pick the rocks til I was blue in the face. It always came back. My cleanup crew would not touch it. turbos, blue legs, peps, none of them would pay any mind.
A while back I had a hair algae problem and thats when I got my turbos, which ate almost every bit of the hair algae, but I still had some growing in odd places that they could not get, so I bought a product called "chem-marin algae stop". It killed off the remaining hair algae in about a week and I had not used any since.
Well after pulling out lots of hair dealing with the hydroids, I thought I would try it on a patch of them. I turned the pump off, covered a 1 inch patch and let it sit for about half an hour. turned the pump back on and went to sleep. Next day, that same 1 inch patch seems to have been thinned out. That evening I noticed 3 blue legs were on top of the patch of hydroids I had treated, munching away at them. I turned the pump off and tried another patch the same way as a couple nights prior. Next morning both areas I had treated, hydroids gone!!!!! Did the whole tank over the next week or so and happy to say they are gone for now.
I cant say if the algae stop did the trick and the blue legs just cleaned up the dead or if the algae stop was like putting a condiment on to the hydroids giving the blue legs a tasty treat.
If you've exhausted all else, give it a try. Hope it helps some of you.
If you have a patch limited to one rock, take it out, get some drugstore ordinary hydrogen peroxide, and dip said area (or use eyedropper) for half a minute in the hp. Then rinse the rock (tap water from sink is ok) to get rid of the hp before putting the rock back in your tank (pure oxygen can burn tissue) so that you don't get excess bubbles of pure oxy that might hurt other specimens. HP will kill almost anything, but does resolve to oxygen, so it is safer than some methods.
Have you had this work on hydroids? Most of my rocks are joined together by coral and I don't really want to separate them. I did soak one rock in HP for a minute and let it sit in a bucket of RO for a while.. No change, damn things lived through it. Maybe a higher concentration of HP is needed, dunno. For those that can't remove their rocks and want a safe and easy fix, my above post worked for me.
+1 for that.
H2O2 loses its potency quickly though. Try a fresh bottle and just spot treat the rock outside of a "bucket" of H2O2, as when you throw it in a bucket it will quickly lose the extra O and become H20. Within minutes so i've heard.
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