thinking about giving up

[Octoberfest]

I just need to vent

I've been working at a reef for over a year now and everything has gone fine up until now. Here are my two major problems.

1. My reef is slowly getting overrun with hydroids. I've tried joe's juice with no effect, hot water with no effect. They are spreading. I've posted questions on how to get rid of them and the only repsones I get are to remove the rock and scrub it. Only problem is I have small colonies on most of the rocks that have them and don't want to kill off all of the life, especially with a manderin in the tank.

2. Problem number two is it looks like my regal tang might have ich. He jams himself in the rocks at night and has had what looks like ich in the past but it's gone away. None of the other fish are effected ever though. He's eating fine and has never "bounced" off of rocks until today, as if he's trying to itch it or something. I know that if it's ich all the fish have to come out and go in a Q tank for 4 to 6 weeks, this I understand. I know that as of right now if he has ich then my tank has ich so I'm going to give it a day or two just to make sure it's not "reef scars". If it is ich then I know they will all be coming out.

So there are my issues, just highly irritated right now and needed to vent.

[MJT82]

I'd go ahead and QT the fish now just incase.

[hwyman]

dont worry about the hydroids they will fade in time, we had them bad at one time and they just slowly disappeared, we still got a couple but and as bad as when they first was noticed.

[Octoberfest]

what about all the horror stories of them taking over the tank. they started growing in a GSP "field" and it looks terrible now, not near as full as my second one.

[six.line]

I don't blame you. I have aiptasia out the wazoo in my nano. Every garden has weeds, though, I guess...

Good luck.

[hwyman]

in a healthy tank the good will eventualy over take the bad, but as everyone says, nothing good happens quickly in this hobbie, just give it time and they will fade.

[Octoberfest]

is there anything I can do to try and lesson it or should I just leave it alone.

[duec22]

The best way to get rid of hydroids is to starve them out. They are filter feeders just like feather dusters. So you want to keep the small particulate matter to a minimume. Try useing filter pads to help filter out the particulate matter, keep up on your water changes. Blow off all the rockwork with a powerhead or turkey baster prior to doing you water changes to try and get out as much of the ditritus as possible. In addition make sure when cleaning off the rockwork to give the hydroid patches a really good blast, as you will find that they have a nack for trapping ditritus at their bases..In addition try to avoid the addition of things like phyto..... HTH

[adtravels]

if you are on the brink of quitting dont qt the fish especially the regal tang they are notoriously prone to stuff and qt will give you more heartache, stress the fish immensly and the parasite will still be in your system more than likely.
feed more vitamins, garlic and a large variety including your own mix ie chopped seafood and the fish will fight it itself.

I dont know what to say about the hydroids but they will eventually collapse if they get too prolific.
dont worry too much as my friend says there are losers and there are losers in the reefkeeping game. One problem solved another one comes it would not be interesting if it were not challenging!