Colonial Hydroids...ridding you tank of them

[Cleancoupe]

I have some colonial hydroids in my tank I'm trying to get rid of. Any suggestions? I've heard of blow torching the rock there on, manual picking them off, using boiling water, using a Blunt Sea Hare (Dolabella auricularia) or Lynx Nudibranch (Phidiana lynceus) to eat them. Some of the rocks that they are on I can remove from the tank, but some of the rocks would be a pain.

[smoothdog]

I got a small klien's butterfly to take care of mojanos and it devoured the colonial hydroids (and I had a lot) before munching the mojanos.

[Cleancoupe]

I haven't heard of a butterfly eating them before. I'll have to look into that, but my only fear is that he'll pick at my corals too. I have sps, lps, zoas,

[Fish Biscuit]

I covered mine up w/ aquascaping putty. It looks odd at first but eventually it gets covered up w/ coraline & you forget it was there.

[smoothdog]

I haven't heard of a butterfly eating them before. I'll have to look into that, but my only fear is that he'll pick at my corals too. I have sps, lps, zoas,

They are one of the more reef friendly butterflies, but as with any fish, may nip at things. Mine leaves all of my coral alone even after having eaten all the hydroids and mojanoes.

[Cleancoupe]

I think I'm going to remove the rocks that have a good bit of hydroids on them & either try one of the butterfly fish or a nutibranch to get the rest of them.

[joyce322]

I wonder if peroxide would work on killing hydroids? Of course you would have to remove the rock but I hear great things about peroxide killing algae.

[mussel and hate]

I had a large population of what appeared to be either a colonial hydroid or scyphozoan. It's the coronate jelly that looks like those pictured in the following threads.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1030340
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=16042535&postcount=163
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=18086619&postcount=10

After adding a mithrax crab to my tank they pretty much disappeared, I have two clusters of perhaps 10 jellies total. these are located at the bottom of a crevice between rock and glass. I observed the crab eating these animals frequently, she thought they were delicious The crab accomplished what I couldn't for the low price of $5.99 on sale at my LFS may she RIP.

[mussel and hate]

I forgot to mention I had hundreds of thousands of these things. That crab was tireless.

[Cleancoupe]

I had a large population of what appeared to be either a colonial hydroid or scyphozoan. It's the coronate jelly that looks like those pictured in the following threads.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1030340
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=16042535&postcount=163
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=18086619&postcount=10

After adding a mithrax crab to my tank they pretty much disappeared, I have two clusters of perhaps 10 jellies total. these are located at the bottom of a crevice between rock and glass. I observed the crab eating these animals frequently, she thought they were delicious The crab accomplished what I couldn't for the low price of $5.99 on sale at my LFS may she RIP.

That's exactly what I have in my tank. Thanks I'll look into getting one of those. I pulled the rocks out that had a lot of them on it & some of the other rocks I chipped them off. It will be nice to get something in there that will get whatever I missed or couldn't see.

[Misled]

I had the same. Not too much, but 5 or 6 little colonies. Added three peppermint shrimp. They were all gone in about three days.

[Anemone]

Flat bladed screwdriver. Most live rock is fairly soft and you can pry off the parts containing the hydroids. It's really the only effective method I've ever found...

Kevin

[billdogg]

^^^What he said^^^ except I used a plastic putty knife and a very stiff bristled scrub brush in a bucket of tank water. Time consuming and labor intensive - also 100% effective.

[mussel and hate]

I guess it depends how much rock you want to sacrifice. The jellies in my tank were embedded pretty deep in the rock. I tried various manual removal techniques including carving the top layer of rock off. I got half an inch in and still saw these fellas. My rock is very porous though, it's been in my system for a long time, YMMV.

Control by predator is the best way to get this job done.

[Cleancoupe]

Thanks for all the advice guys. I manually removed all I could with a screw driver & I'm going to put a natural predator in there to get what I missed.