Colonial hydroids (FOWLR)

[N2theUnknown]

Ok everyone. My dad has had his tank (same rock) for 25 years. Tank has changed over the years and nothing new but fish amd inverts. This is a FOWLR system. Withen the past few weeks we have noticed this explosion of tiny brown feather dusters which upon some research seems to be colonial hydroids. Ill try and get a good pic of them withen the next few days. Now out of all of the posts ive read there doesnt seem to be a natural predator. Some reports of pepermint shrimp. I would assume some sort of butterfly would work but most people wont try them as they are not reef safe. But we dont need reef safe haha thanks in advance everyone. Also this is a 180 gallon tank.

 

[King Turkey]

if in one spot. superglue to entomb them. could remove rock kalk past for a wail rinse then return rock. that is all i can think of at the moment.

 

[flsalty]

I've heard butterflies as well. However, I wouldn't worry about them too much in a FOWLR. They will run their course without hurting anything.

 

[N2theUnknown]

Yea they are everywhere along all 6 foot of the tank haha. So our only thinking is that there was some in the tank always but a few weeks ago we decided to take a power head and blast the rock to clean out all yhe detritus. Which in return obviosuly put alot of good into the water coulmn for filter feeders. So hopefully they will die out. But at the rate they are spreading is pretty amazing. Im going to guess there is curently 200 new polyps per day. We are also thinking of using a syringe to blast boilimg water at them.

 

[lkriley]

Add a Peppermint shrimp if you are talking about the Aiptasia. I wouldn't worry about it if it is just feather dusters. No harm there and fun to look at. The feather dusters have tubes they live in, then protrude out of. Not sure if this helps our not!!

 

[N2theUnknown]

No its not aiptasia. Kinda hard to leave something when its covering 140 pounds of fiji rock

 

[King Turkey]

Dang that's alot

 

[Backreefing]

I found a natural predator of hydroids and it’s reef safe ........

 

[N2theUnknown]

I found a natural predator of hydroids and it’s reef safe ........

It's kinda dying out. We are thinking what happened is hes always had them just not noticeable. He took k a powerhead to his rock after like 8 years so I created a mass amount of "food" in water coulmn for them to eat.

 

[Backreefing]

Here is all you need to get “ tuxedo urchins “

 

[N2theUnknown]

Here is all you need to get “ tuxedo urchins “

Urchins eat Coraline alge though

 

[Puff The Magic DragonSoul]

I found a natural predator of hydroids and it’s reef safe ........

Hello! What natural predator have you found, that eats colonial hydroids?

 

[Backreefing]

Tuxedo urchins

 

[N2theUnknown]

That's awesome ours ended up just going away. I think what happened was after 8 years we took a power head to the rocks and kicked up alot of locked up detritus which aloud there population to expload then all the extra food was gone and they died.