HYDROID Infestation.. help?

[crailtap25]

Ok, so i recently set up my first saltwater tank and joined here. Its only a 10g, and i know you're not supposed to start with something that small, but i have a few experienced friends who have helped me. Anyways, i bought all my live rock off craigslist for a very good deal, and put it in the tank. At first i didnt know what the little feathery things were and disregarded them, but now that Ive done research on them I'm sure i have Digitate Hydroids , Colonial Hydroids, and possibly another type of branching hydroid. So my question is..how do you think i should remove them? I don't want to try and apply anything over them individually ( like kalk) because there's too many and there's no way i could find them all. Ive heard some people have luck with peppermint shrimp eating them, so i figured I'd try it, even though i had low hopes. So far they haven't helped at all. My next options include boiling the rock, or using a product like Hydrox, or Panacur in doses to kill the Hydroids. I don't want to cook the rock because i'm way too impatient for that... I'd only like to boil the rock as a last resport, but also don't want to kill anything else in the tank with Hydrox/ Panacur. Right now i have a snail, some hermit crabs, serpent starfish, peppermint shrimp, as well as other hitchhikers - spaghetti worms, keyhole limpets, and another pink/purple mushroomy looking growth (not sure what it is) .

So what do you think i should do? Boil it and be done with everything, and then re seed the rock ( i don't have any uninfested rock to seed with :sad2: ), or try and use a de-worming agent like Panacur to kill only the Hydroids and save the Coraline growth? Any help with ID would also be appreciated. Thanks for looking!

 

[Peter T]

In smaller tanks, I would just advise you to pull them out with tweezers. It worked for me. You can also cover them with super glue gel, not the normal liquid. It smothers them and later coraline algae will grow over the unsightly gel.

As far as IDing, image 0887 I cannot make anything out. Image 0893 I don't recognize. And image 0895 looks like it can be it 3 or 4 of them in the center. It looks like it may be aiptasia from the pic as well, but I trust your judgment

One last thing is if your system is still new, there is a pretty good chance that the hydroids will die off on their own as they starve to death after using all the excess nutrients caused by the cycling of the tank.

 

[emeraude1484]

Uphill Battle

Uphill Battle

Sorry, I'm having a hard time seeing the hydroids in these pics. here's 2 pics first are the ones I battled with second are slower to grow and spread, they grow similar to tbe worms.

I JUST had the same issue but in an established tank. Huge amount of colonial hydroids on at least 1/4 of the LR in the tank I tried purchasing flame and atlantic pygmy angels that were supposed to eat it, I started manually removing them. (grew back stronger) I didn't try Hydrox or Panacur. I lost a large colony of deep water zoas but save all the birdnest and hard corals. I literaly removed all the rocks that had any trace of it after battling with it for over a month. Let them all dry out completely. I know it's now dry rock but at least you wont have to fight an uphill battle because these things are almost indestructible.

 

[emeraude1484]

Sorry the 1st pic are the ones similar to tube worms.

 

[crailtap25]

887 is a pic of 2 digitate hydroids, 893 is a white branching type of hydroids ( i think, i remember seeing a picture similar somewhere), and 895 is a small colony of colonial hydroids. There are way too many to manually cover with anything. I'm thinking i should just boil it all (that would work?). How would i treat the sand then? there could be some in that too.. I could sift it with a net maybe? Also this is a new tank, so i guess they could die off in a few weeks?