Household "tools" for killing colonial hydroids

[SlickSkimmer19]

Hello all, I've done quite an extensive amount of research on how to kill colonial hydroids. At first glance (in doing the research) it seemed like the organisms were going to be relatively hard to eradicate unless some drastic measures were taken (i.e. take out rock completely and let dry, kalk paste or epoxy over, etc.) I had a number of smaller colonies growing throughout my nano aquarium, but I did not want to kill off ALL the beneficial organisms (worms, pods, bacteria, etc). I also did not want to go the route of kalk paste (didn't want the pH swing) and I also didn't want to epoxy (I wanted to maintain the aesthetically pleasing natural formation of the live rock).....so after reading through multiple articles I decided on a combination method. I wanted to maintain a minimalist attitude while also being relatively thrifty in my methods.

I first took out the problematic rocks, proceeded to use a pipette (you can use something different like a turkey baster depending on the extent of the invasion) to spray the colonies with lime juice (lemon or lime works) to stress the pest organism {**This alone will not work....I tried it**}. To complete the deed I then sprayed the colonies with boiling water.

By spot spraying the colonies I saved a lot of the beneficial organisms that would have been "wasted" if I were to toss the rock, maintained a stable pH without the use of kalk paste and maintained the aesthetics of the natural live rock.

-Cheers

 

[flyyyguy]

A blow torch takes no prisoners, and only kills a irrelevant portion of your rock whee you torched

It also makes your rock turn this really cool flourescent orange color where you torched it for a while

 

[SlickSkimmer19]

Haha, yeah unfortunately I don't have a blowtorch and I did read about that :-D. And yeah it some of my coralline algae turned that fluorescent orangey color. It was pretty cool

 

[fatoldsun]

To complete the deed I then sprayed the colonies with boiling water.

Just curious (b/c I'm having a similar issue) how did you spot spray with boiling water? What did you use?