aiptasia made me crosseyed

[bprewit]

I have a few aiptasia in my tank, well i thought there were only a few, I found and killed 28 of the little buggers. There were only three that were getting big, all the others were tiny and took lots of staring at the tank to see and that was about 4 hours of staring and moving around rock to get to them! Good thing is I found some shrooms growing that I havent seen before, bad news is i have lots and lots of the tiny little anenomes that live in tubes but not sure what they are called? Not sure exactly how to kill them, but they are tiny and maybe wont pose much risk to my other inhabitants?

[C.Mydas]

sound like feather dusters not anemones.

[bprewit]

nope have lots of featherdusters in my tank but these arent them. I found the name, Hydroids! That may explain the tiny jellyfish looking critters swimming around in my refugium? Here is a picture of them:
http://www.reefs.org/hhfaq/pages/picture_pages/faq_hydroids.html

[Reef69]

are hydroids bad?

[bprewit]

from what I have read yes I think they are bad. There are 5 or 6 little colonies of these guys in my tank that I can see, each colony consisting of 8-10 individuals and I read that while very very small they pack a considerable sting that can harm corals. They are tiny though with the entire colony measuring less than 1/8-1/4" across. I dont think the kalk solution trick will work on them as them pull inside the tubes when anything gets close, but I have used a extra thick mixture of kalk and water through a syringe with no needle to pretty much cement them in a almost permanent tomb.

[Someone]

so how exactly do you kill hydroids? besides using kalk

[eric]

hmmm, I always thought that was aiptasia. Starting to make a little more sense. My peppermint shrimp would eat them, an injection of lemon juice didn't phase them.

It has spread recently quite rapidly.

I went to lather some with a kalk paste this evening. Definitely have a hard tube.

Any other thoughts on ridding the tank of them?

[GaryP]

The bad news is that if you found 28 aiptasia, there are probably twice that many that you didn't find.

Consider getting some Berghia and quit worrying about it.

[FSU]

dp

[eric]

But that's the point. Now I realize they aren't aiptasia, they're hydroids. Or would the nudibranches eat that them too?

(Is the plural of hydroid hydroids? Reminds me of the hydrilla problem in Lake Austin, but I digress.)

So I saw some other thread about something eating them but then ate a bunch of star polyps. I wouldn't mind anything eating my star polyps. Two birds with one stone as far as I'm concerned.

[FSU]

Try here and see if this article helps you!


http://www.rshimek.com/cnidaria.htm

[eric]

FSU, That's them at the very bottom: "nasty" regular hydroids.

I'll try some paste on some and maybe try peeling off other colonies.

[bprewit]

Hey good link, thats what I have as well. They are small but from what I read they still have a strong enough sting to irritate some corals.
GaryP- yes I know man for every one of those aptasia i killed there are two more somewhere that I cant see. It really sucks because LFS in Odessa does get in some really nice looking coral but his coral tank is more infested with aptasia than any tank I have ever seen. I dont buy from him unless I am desperate or unless he has something really really cool looking or really really cheap and that has only been one time, still one time too many as now they are infesting my tank as well. I bought a near dead branching pink/green hammer coral from him that had one little piece of tissue left on it for $3. It is doing great and has tripled in size in the last month but now I have the aptasia problem. My question is will my blue cheek trigger or lion eat the Berghia? Worth a try I suppose, but will email them and ask that question before I get any.