Colonial Hydroids

AquaPhilNJ · Jun 7, 2020

I have the exact issue as laid out in this thread, which has no solution.

Colonial Hydroids when Upgrading Tank

Hello everyone! First-time poster, so forgive me if I post this in the wrong section. Also, I do not speak English natively, so please bear with me. At the beginning of the year, I started my first reef tank. It is a 16 gallon tank which I chose to scape using live rock. From the very beginning...

www.reef2reef.com

Tank Info:
My tank's info (however feel is not so relevant considering this topic) 55 gallon tank (feel is a mature tank, but did move apartments last year); 0.75 ppm Nitrate, 0.01 Phosphate ; 8.4 ALK ; 450 Cal ; 1290 MAG; 1.026 SG. Currently facing a minor dinos issue from using bio-pellets, hard to keep Nitrate above zero.

Situation explained:
I have been brushing them off with toothbrush every day. I am hoping that it will go away with time but I am not counting on it. I brush them off quickly and currently their trunks are too thin to use tweezers. I sometimes see medusa hyroids (free floating) on glass and always scrap off, I feel those ones attached to the glass mated and caused the hydroids growing on the rocks as seen from picture in referenced thread.

What are peoples experience concerning treating a reef tank with these hydroids ? I don't want these things growing on my rocks. Also fear what would happen if I didn't consistently brush off such as becoming increasingly large, numerous and/or unsightly.

andrewey · Jun 7, 2020

They will go away in time. I've never encountered a report of them being harmful unless you have seahorses or a few other very sensitive species. I've had them in most of my new tanks. They all went away. I'd leave them be.

AquaPhilNJ · Jun 7, 2020

andrewey said:
They will go away in time. I've never encountered a report of them being harmful unless you have seahorses or a few other very sensitive species. I've had them in most of my new tanks. They all went away. I'd leave them be.

Did yours also look exactly like the ones (species) as shown in the picture? What should I expect if I was to stop brushing them off the rocks, concerning how big will they get and will that cause additional spreading. How bad will it get before it gets better : / or any estimate concerning how long it took yours to decrease and/or go away?

andrewey · Jun 7, 2020

It's been too long for me to say exactly, but as well as I can remember, I had some that looked pretty dang close to the ones pictured. They didn't seem to grow too much larger and spread to most parts of all of my rocks in discreet clusters. I never really thought it was bad and enjoyed their presence, so it's hard to pinpoint when I stopped noticing them, but I'd ballpark it around a year.

I currently have a new setup and have a different type of hydroid everywhere. I enjoy watching them - I have a monti setosa frag where the back half died, so now half of the frag is coral and the other half is hydroids. Each day the hydroid territory gets smaller and smaller as the monti overgrows them. For now, it's fun to see the two animals side by side.

Nano sapiens · Jun 7, 2020

AquaPhilNJ said:
I have the exact issue as laid out in this thread, which has no solution.

Colonial Hydroids when Upgrading Tank

Hello everyone! First-time poster, so forgive me if I post this in the wrong section. Also, I do not speak English natively, so please bear with me. At the beginning of the year, I started my first reef tank. It is a 16 gallon tank which I chose to scape using live rock. From the very beginning...

www.reef2reef.com

Tank Info:
My tank's info (however feel is not so relevant considering this topic) 55 gallon tank (feel is a mature tank, but did move apartments last year); 0.75 ppm Nitrate, 0.01 Phosphate ; 8.4 ALK ; 450 Cal ; 1290 MAG; 1.026 SG. Currently facing a minor dinos issue from using bio-pellets, hard to keep Nitrate above zero.

Situation explained:
I have been brushing them off with toothbrush every day. I am hoping that it will go away with time but I am not counting on it. I brush them off quickly and currently their trunks are too thin to use tweezers. I sometimes see medusa hyroids (free floating) on glass and always scrap off, I feel those ones attached to the glass mated and caused the hydroids growing on the rocks as seen from picture in referenced thread.

What are peoples experience concerning treating a reef tank with these hydroids ? I don't want these things growing on my rocks. Also fear what would happen if I didn't consistently brush off such as becoming increasingly large, numerous and/or unsightly.

I've had these in two tanks over the last 20+ years.

When I started a small nano tank, I attempted to get rid of them over a few months time by constantly removing the small groupings with a precision tweazer. While I was able to make a real dent, the problem is that every time I removed a colony patch tiny pieces would break off and each one will likely form a new grouping and a'root' fragment, like many a garden weed, often stays behind..

After realizing that, I assessed whether they could cause any harm. While they can sting other organisms, nearly all corals will either overrun them or shade them to the point where they exist, but don't do much else. Only some really small micro zoas might show some real damage from them.

IME, the best way to control them (other than introducing a specific predator, which is hard to find/identify) is to limit the amount of fine foods (reef roids, baby brine shrimp, etc.) fed to the tank. Washing your frozen food first in a net so that only larger pieces are fed helps, too.