What is this, how can I get rid of it?

s2881100 · #1 12/27/2007, 10:32 AM

I setup a fuge for my lovely mandarin,
there are a lot of pods growing in side,
but recently, I saw a weird white animal on the tank glass,
it occupy the whole tank glass,
pods population reduced a lot,
What is the white creature,
and how can I get rid of it?

by hand or any nature enemy for it?
Picture is below,
Thank you for your help.

amike5 · #2 12/27/2007, 11:26 AM

Looks like hydroids. Hard to get rid of, kalk paste em, burn em, manual removal is all I know of.

papagimp · #3 12/27/2007, 11:32 AM

Yup, got one pod right their in the middle surrounded by hydroids. I don't bother doing anything bout the ones in my tanks. How long has this tank been up, did they just start showing up after the fuge addition? Usually their numbers will die off shortly after the tank matures some. But since their showing up in increasing numbers, probably just something new you did that is keeping them well fed (such as adding a fuge), manual removal for now is all I'd recommend, and that's probably not neccessary either.

that said, I have heard some horror stories of hydroids getting out of control, but I've never witnessed this so don't know too much for mass removal of them.

capn_hylinur · #4 12/27/2007, 12:31 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by papagimp
Yup, got one pod right their in the middle surrounded by hydroids. I don't bother doing anything bout the ones in my tanks. How long has this tank been up, did they just start showing up after the fuge addition? Usually their numbers will die off shortly after the tank matures some. But since their showing up in increasing numbers, probably just something new you did that is keeping them well fed (such as adding a fuge), manual removal for now is all I'd recommend, and that's probably not neccessary either.

that said, I have heard some horror stories of hydroids getting out of control, but I've never witnessed this so don't know too much for mass removal of them.

are they considered a menace to the tank?

JENnKerry · #5 12/27/2007, 08:43 PM

I think they are more of an eye sore then a menace. I found them all the time when I worked at the fish store, they never SEEMED to hurt anything or anyone.

bertoni · #6 12/27/2007, 08:57 PM

They won't hurt anything, and usually go away on their own. You could scrape them off to reduce the eyesore issue. I think they're a hydroid jellyfish, in this case.

s2881100 · #7 12/27/2007, 10:42 PM

The problem is, I want to increase the population of my pods,
but those hydroid jelly fish occupy the whole glass of tank,
and reproduce very quick.
I can see at least a thousand of hydroid on the glass.

The fuge was setup about 2 month ago,
but recently I add micro-algae (like DT's plankton) fuge.

They are quite annoying.
Pods seem to be afraid of hydroid.

bertoni · #8 12/27/2007, 10:53 PM

The polyps will sting a lot of animals. I'm not sure that losing the glass surface changes the number of animals much, but scraping might help.

amike5 · #9 12/28/2007, 09:52 AM

I'm sure you have more pods than you think. I wouldn't worry about the population because of hydroids. But if you do have that many hydroids, you may want to intervene and attempt to reduce their populations.

capn_hylinur · #10 12/28/2007, 10:52 AM

reading back through this thread--are we talking about the glass sides of the refugium here? If so fuges should be allowed to just exist on their own--nature will take care of the populations.

IMO you don't have to feed anything to the fuge----there is lots of phyto and algae in the water column.