Any Guess To What These Are?

[Monte455]

These colonies of small Tube Worms? Feather Dusters? Anenome's? Have been on my live rock since about the first year, only over the last year have they seemed to explore other areas of the tank. They are very small, each head about 1/4 in or so wide from filament tip to filament tip, their filaments only extend slightly owtward from the base, and then only up from there. Please let me know what you think, I am venturing towards tube worms as they appear to come from some sort of hard tube, where anenome's are typically fleshy?

[denhay14]

I have something similar to that in my tank but much much smaller. Don't know what it is and didn't think anything of it since it's so tiny.

[Ninong]

Hi Monte455,




My guess is hydroids. I'll ask a couple of other guys what they think.

[kevinpo]

Yes they are hydroids. They can spread rapidly in nutrient rich environments. They have the capability to sting corals if they come in contact with them. Some of the Butterfly fish and large Angels eat them.

Regards,
Kevin

[Seige]

Yes they are hydroids. They can spread rapidly in nutrient rich environments. They have the capability to sting corals if they come in contact with them. Some of the Butterfly fish and large Angels eat them.

Regards,
Kevin

Are Hydroids/Aptasia the same? If not how do you know they aren't aptasia? What's the difference? Just the colouring?

I looked at some pics of other Hydroids and they don't look quite the same as what Monte has.

Just trying to learn what I can.

[zhenya]

Are Hydroids/Aptasia the same? If not how do you know they aren't aptasia? What's the difference? Just the colouring?

I looked at some pics of other Hydroids and they don't look quite the same as what Monte has.

Just trying to learn what I can.

The difference between this cnidarians is in the simplicity of the gut of the hydroids,(it doesn't have any folds or septa) and thinness of their body wall. Aside from the fact that they belong to a different Class taxonomically. I think..

Hydroids belong to the Class Hydrozoa which include some of the corals (fire and lace corals) but those belong to different Order. It is confusing as hell, I know.

[Seige]

The difference between this cnidarians is in the simplicity of the gut of the hydroids,(it doesn't have any folds or septa) and thinness of their body wall. Aside from the fact that they belong to a different Class taxonomically. I think..

Hydroids belong to the Class Hydrozoa which include some of the corals (fire and lace corals) but those belong to different Order. It is confusing as hell, I know.

So the "visual" identification is the colour changes (caused by the folds) in the stalk?

[Ninong]

Aiptasia don't look anything like hydroids. For one thing, they're much larger, usually 1.5"-2" but they can get as big as 3"-4".

Hydroids, Class Hydrozoa




Aiptasia, Class Anthozoa




A. majano, Class Anthozoa


All three are pests and need to be exterminated.

[denhay14]

Nevermind I don't have that, and the first pic is nasty.

[Monte455]

Aiptasia don't look anything like hydroids. For one thing, they're much larger, usually 1.5"-2" but they can get as big as 3"-4".

Hydroids, Class Hydrozoa


All three are pests and need to be exterminated.

Ninong, the first picture is exactly what I have, I agree they are pests, and need to be exterminated. I looked up some remedies after the name was first brought up, any suggestions to exterminate are greatly appreciated.

[Ninong]

I've never had to deal with them, or Aiptasia. The only "pest" I had was an unknown red turf alga that took me 10 months to get rid of.

I wonder if Aiptasia-X would work on hydroids?

I can tell you what I remember reading online about how to get rid of hydroids. Mainly it involved removing each affected piece of live rock from the aquarium to a separate container with saltwater where the hydroids could be assaulted with heated limewater (Kalkwasser) paste. You make a very thick small batch of limewater, sort of like a watery tooth paste, and then you heat it in the microwave. Then you use one of the little syringes that you get with your test kits to apply some hot limewater past directly to each hydroid while the rock is in the bowl of saltwater.

The reason you remove the piece of rock to a separate container is because you would probably raise your pH too much if you did this in the aquarium. And you should have several containers (bowls) of saltwater available so that you can move the rock from the messed up container to one with clean saltwater. This can get tricky and may not even be a good idea if you have valuable corals on the same piece of rock.

You could always remove the piece of rock and then blast the hydroids with one of those little miniature butane torches that chefs use to caramelize sugar on top of creme caramel. :eek3:

There are a number of different hydroids that show up as problems in reef tanks. The brown ones pictures are the worst.

[TimH07]

Hydroids are related to jellyfish, with both mobile and sessile forms. They can have a potent sting, but generally vanish with time in aquariums.

thats from the link you provided, why do they say they will vanish in time?

[kevinpo]

thats from the link you provided, why do they say they will vanish in time?

On average most coral keepers try to limit the nutrient buildup in the tank and feed sparingly. Once a tank is well cycled (1 year or so) with little algae and no nitrate reading they tend to die out due to lack of food.

With limited food sources unwanted anemone populations, bristle worms, etc. will grow very slowly or not at all. In tanks with heavy feeding and/or high nutrient levels the populations will explode without any predators to kill them off. I don't why it is but it's always the unwanted things that are so easy to grow and grow so fast .

In tanks 50 gallons or larger you can use kalkwasser paste (calcium hydroxide) also known as pickling lime to kill them in the tank. PH is not a problem if you apply to a colony of the size pictured above then wait a day or two and do the next if you have multiple colonies. The paste will react with the calcium in the water and turn hard in a few seconds keeping it from dispersing around the tank. Be sure to turn off the pumps before applying.

Regards,
Kevin

[TimH07]

my problem with learning the news that these are pests, is that i have a small colony of them directly under a montipora cap. almost touching, there is no removing the rock and they are so close that anything i do would kill the monti also.

[Ninong]

Hydroids are related to jellyfish, with both mobile and sessile forms. They can have a potent sting, but generally vanish with time in aquariums.

thats from the link you provided, why do they say they will vanish in time?

That's just a general comment made by the particular Reefs.org moderator who posted that picture of those nasty brown hydroids. I think it's less true of the particular species pictured than it is of some of the wispy, nearly translucent, spidery ones that often show up soon after new live rock is added.

Another point to remember is that there are several hundred, if not several thousand, different species of hydroids. Hydrozoa is a class with two subclasses and at least seven different orders. I'm pretty sure we're talking about thousands of different animals here. Some are colonial (like the brown ones in the photo) and some are not. Some have a medusa stage and some do not.

Wikipedia has an extremely brief description.

Here is an article Dr. Ron Shimek wrote about hydroids back in 1997.

This diagram from Ron's article showing basic hydroid morphology is a good representation of how those nasty brown hydroids are built:

[Ninong]

there is no removing the rock and they are so close that anything i do would kill the monti also.

No, that's not necessarily true. You would just have to be careful in what you do and how you do it. You certainly don't want to get any Kalkwasser paste, or anything else for that matter, directly on the Montipora capricornis. However, even if you do, you would not likely kill the cap, just damage the spot that was affected, which should recover in time.

I still think you should investigate that new Aiptasia-X product. I'm very impressed at the way it works on Aiptasia and I have a feeling that it would also work on hydroids.

I wonder if Aiptasia-X would work on hydroids?

[Seige]

I had an aptasia growing on a rock with a mushroom close to it. I didn't remove the aptasia right away because I wasn't sure what it was. It started reproducing and I was able to have someone confirm that it was aptasia. Decided to remove the rock from the tank and thoroughly burned the areas with aptasia with a lighter. We haven't seen any sign of the aptasia in weeks and we keep checking very carefully. The mushrooms doing great.

[Monte455]

Yea, I think I will try the Aptaisia X on a small colony, see if it does anything. I really, really don't want to tear apart my set up and disturb everything to burn off these guys, so any in tank remedie I can try I will. I remember someone mentioned Angel's eat these, I don't need any more fish and had heard that Angels are difficult to keep, but may try that if the Aptaisia X does not work. I don't think mine will dissappear in time, as they only appear to have expanded in my tank since there were none visable for the first few months, now years later most of my pieces have at least one of these on them. Anyway thanks for all the great info, it has been very helpfull. If the Aptaisia X works, I will post the outcome.

[TimH07]

if you would, let me know how that goes, i might try that, but i just got rid of all my aiptasia via peppermint shrimp (they ate every single one including ones almost an inch in diameter!)

[Monte455]

Just an update, I had a tank meltdown in November and lost everything because of medicating for cyanobacteria. So I took all my LR and scrubbed it down, rinsed it off and propane torched the colonies of these Hydroids. Been almost 3 months now since that, and I still have a few small returning colonies in those hard to get places, but because I am still in the process of rebuilding my stock I can easily take the piece of rock out and torch the colony again, problem is that kills all the coraline on the rock too, so I have to wait till the coraline starts to reappear on those treated rocks. I may try the hot water squirt, but these are very resilient, having reappeared after being on rock that dried overnight, was propane torched, and survived the meltdown of my tank when all my levels skyrocketed past the highest levels my test kit could show. The meds killed out my nautural filter bacteria in the whole tank, thus the tank was not able to support the live stock, and further more as animals began to die they only added to the chaos. Aptaisia treatments didn't appear to help, such as Joes Juice. The torch option works, but you may have to re-torch those areas that are very dense.