This may be an easy one for you veterans...

[turbiville]

What are these, and are they good guys or bad guys?

Thank you in advance!

~C

 

[seafansar]

Those are hydroids. They will bother corals they touch and can spread kind of quickly. I would rip them off the rock with tweezers. The tube is not hard and you have to grab them before the hydroid moves its body down the tube. If you don't feel like doing all that, then just leave them be. They aren't that bad.

 

[turbiville]

Is there natural control method? Like the peppermint shrimp that took care of the glass anemones.

Thank you.

C

 

[seafansar]

Not that I know of, unfortunately. I have some in my tank too.

 

[goldenmacman]

i have a few.. i dont believe that they are harmful other than agitation toward some corals.. if you like em keep em.. really, i like them kinda weird addition to look at

 

[corrado007]

Yeah, I have a few patches of Hydroids in my tank also. They don't seem to spread much/quickly but my corals don't seem to like to grow next to them.

 

[RockBox]

Best way to get rid of them is to take the rock out and torch them. Another method that works is completely covering them with glue or epoxy and placing LR rubble on top of them.

 

[turbiville]

Here is the same exact shot, exactly 24 hours later:

Again, this is what is looked like yesterday:

So who do you think gets the credit?

Coral Banded Shrimp?
Peppermint Shrimp?
Hermit Crabs?
Astraea Turbo Snails?
Giant Mexican Turbos?

It may be coincidence, but I woke up to Cyano covered sand this morning.

Any thoughts?

 

[seafansar]

They will pull back into their tubes if anything rubs up against them, so it could have been any one of your clean up crew just walking across them. Doubt anything was actually going after them.

 

[RockBox]

^ Agreed. Their tubes are deeply rooted and difficult to remove completely. You would need to remove the rock and gauge out infected area with a sharp metal object or drill bit. Since your tank looks young that's what I would do.

 

[Surfnut]

I had a patch similar to this quite a while back. I put a piece of GSP next to it and it overgrew them in no time.

 

[plecosword]

I thought those were feather dusters!, i have abut 3 or 4 clusters of these!

 

[turbiville]

I had a patch similar to this quite a while back. I put a piece of GSP next to it and it overgrew them in no time.

But between these two, which is the lesser evil? GSPs are very nice looking, so I guess they would win, but aren't they even harder to control?

 

[seafansar]

The hydroids will overgrow zoanthids too. They're doing that in my tank.