Identify please

Redhdfishgirl

New member
Anyone know what is this? I used to think these were clusters of feather dusters but now am worried that they are myrionemia hydriods. If they are something bad-what is the best course of action to get rid of them. Thanks so much!
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They definitely look like they could be hydroids, but it's hard to tell from your photo. You'll need to get a better image if you want an accurate ID.
 
they are hydroids..can be a sign of excess nutrients, some say remove them others say they will die back with improvement in water.
 
Our water parameters are excellent......can we pluck them out? I think these came on the rock when we bought it from a guy breaking down his tank. I never worried because I thought they were feather dusters.
 
I used to have a small rock and had the same question a few mos ago, they are hydroids. you can take the rock out and just scrape them off.
 
Yikes! We have a bunch of coral on this rock (as its our main rock-its over 20 lbs), so will plucking be sufficient? Thanks everyone!
 
ggod luck with trying to get rid of those hydroids....... you can pull them out but they will come back.... i have some as well and i even took the rock out and used a torch on the and they snaped and poped and they even came back about a month later.... there is really no way to kill them.... i think they are so deep in the rock that you cant get to them...... if you can take the rock completely out before it spreads....... if you pull them off the rock and you let any of them to float around... where ever they land it will grow........ i have been fighting them for about a year now.....good luck... i hate to be a bearer of bad news
 
I've had limited success by coating them in thick kalk paste. They are more common in lower quality water. When you say your water conditions are excellent, what do you test for? What test kits are you using? What are you test results?
 
IMHO the best bet is to go at them with each water change. Use a screwdriver or other small, blunt (clean!) tool and scrape/dig them off. Have a siphon tube going right near the area you're working in so you can suck the remains right out with the dirty water change water. Of course, this is easiest to do if you have help. If your nutrient levels really are good, this should eradicate them over time without totally disrupting your tank.
 
I dont see how water perams really contribute to the growth of these since I have seen them in the most pristine low nutrient sps tanks.
 
We use our LFS, API tests, refractometer and tetra tests. I've been told to throw away the tetra tests-but I've gotten the same readings as the high end ones-so I will use it up until its time to replace them. In the very beginning we struggled with our phosphates, but it was nothing serious, I believe it was because we used tap water instead of DI water to make the sw. We bought the rock from a reefer who was moving and the hydriods were already there. We didn't have anything in the tank besides 20 lbs of live rock that came with the tank. I didn't know that it wasn't bad until I stumbled across it when I was reading about something entirely different.
We went ahead and took a few of the corals off so we could take the rock out. We used a screw driver to remove parts of the rock that contained the three large clumps you could see in the photo. Since we've put it back in (and subsequently had to re-aquascape) I've seen a few small ones here and there. I may try the kalk paste or scrapping them during a water change and having the syphon near by. Thanks for everyones help. I saw some white single ones that I thought were feather dusters and now I'm off to research if we have other bad ones. We have now decided not to buy live rock from anyone without scrubbing and drying them out.
 
Those look like the 'myrionema' type of hydroids.

Were you able to get rid of the last single ones that you saw? I have heard that covering them with aquamend putty would help get rid of them (they may burrow into rock so that just scraping them off doesn't work).
 
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