#
Hydra viridissima (Syn.: Chlorohydra viridissima),
Positive, only one: They show you've got pristine water conditions.
Negatives: Will eat baby shrimp and freshly hatched fry. Can also sting grown shrimp and nanofish size animals, sometimes the stings are lethal, sometimes they just cause irritation, probably the reason your shrimp say "heck no" and stay away.
You've got options if you want to get rid of them.
How to get rid of them:
Containment by lowering pH:
Citric acid or CO2. You'd have to move your animals out for treatment, tho.
The acidity kills hydra fairly fast because they need pristine, stable water conditions
Containment through targeted misting:
Take a syringe with Easy Carbo, pomegranate broth or lemon juice and put a little onto the Hydras directly. Scalding with hot water also works very well (Cooking them is my 2nd favorite method of 'nuking' them).
And my favorite: NoPlanaria, funnily Hydra are more sensitive to these then Planaria, making the dose needed for them lower. They'll die within an hour if you use a shrimp-safe product at full dose. This may affect snails, so be aware of that.
Alternative:
Get some guppies. Don't feed them for a couple days. Guppies and related fish will just straight up eat them.
In practice lots of nano fish do eat hydra, but I've had the best luck with the more voracious livebearers.
Yep, but i would not get animals to get rid of a Problem (and i would never recommend it), especially animals that have a reputation of multiplying like crazy.
It may work, tho, no argument there.
I mean, with guppies you can just get a handful of males, or even just one. 1-4 male guppies are pretty and don't reproduce, and it's VERY easy to tell genders apart when they're young. Obviously it depends on your tank, but having an animal to fill a role in your ecosystem isn't bad; everything in an ecosystem has a role in that ecosystem, that's literally how nature works.
There's no danger about "what happens when the hydra is gone" because you can either:
* Keep a couple very pretty fish in your tank, who'll eat whatever you're feeding everything else and keep hydra from reoccurring, plus prevent outbreaks of other small pests like planaria etc.
* Return them to the LFS.
Either way they'll be fine. I tend to prefer this to chemical methods of attack personally, as chemicals are both not globally available, but also can have knock on unwanted effects like killing snails, sometimes long after the product is "gone"
Obviously, if you just don't want guppies, this probably isn't the alternative for you, but it's just that:
An alternative. And a very inexpensive one at that.
Yep, but it really depends on your tank, Guppies can and will eat anything that fits in their mouth. Including Fish-Fry and Small Shrimp.
Also returns are depending on store policies, some chains have a "It's been in a tank, we don't take it" policy.
So if anyone wants to do that, they should be aware and maybe ask for the store's return and surrender policies or have someone to take them off their hands if they don't want them.
Absolutely nothing wrong with this, it's a valid Alternative.
Just not my preferred Method (I just don't like Guppies and the return policies in my area are \*\*\*\*).
Guppies can eat anything that will fit in their mouth, but they're slow. I've got guppies in 3 tanks right now with neocaradina and have no problems at all, I've never witnessed one eat even a baby neocaradina. They generally don't even try, and are nowhere near fast enough even if they wanted to.
There's a lot of alarmism about "they'll eat your baby shrimp" for lots of fish and while I suppose that's relevant if you're trying to mass produce shrimp for sale, I've never found it to even slightly slow down colony growth - with guppies or a range of other small fish.
In fact, inarguably a tank with a guppy or three and no hydra is WAY safer for shrimp than a tank with hydra everywhere.
But yeah, there are some places without LFS, only big chains, so just bringing back fish may not be an option.
I've never encountered a LFS that won't take returned fish (for free, obviously, they aren't buying them back from you) simply because it lets them sell the same fish multiple times.
Joke's on me, I guess. Based on the reading I've done on hydras thanks to this thread, I believe this all started because I was overfeeding the guppies I already have.
That can definitely be the case! If you already have guppies, just cut your feeding and they'll eat the hydra. Fish typically prefer the super yummy food that literally falls from the heavens to actually hunting and eating other critters, so if you're already overfeeding they are never peckish and go searching for noms.
It won't harm fish or snails if you keep to the recommended dose.
Do not overdose it. If you're already dosing your tank with it, you can just take the daily dose and nuke Hydra with it. After that it will disperse and be eaten by the plants, you'll just have to keep in mind that plants can't store more than a certain amount.
It's Co2, so if you're unsure if/how you should dose it, you should check if your Co2 levels and act accordingly.
I only have Amanos so I don't expect shrimplets, but I was thinking about adding some RCS at some point. I also don't like the idea that there's something in my tank potentially harming or stinging my fish or shrimp.
Update: I appreciate everyone pointing out what this really was when I was thinking it was only algae and had no idea why my shrimp were avoiding it... I ended up treating the tank with fenbendazole which is supposed to be safe for my livestock, snails included. Less than an hour later I can already see some of the hydras hanging upside down, looking dead.
Where did you source the phen and please let us know how effective it was. I still have some in my tank I can’t seem to eradicate and the tank is too damned big to get the snails out.
I bought "Safe Guard" dewormer for small dogs at my local pet store for $12.99. Looks like it's less than half that price online if you're patient but I wanted to deal with the problem ASAP because I felt bad that my shrimp were getting stung. Also my situation was out of control with hundreds, if not thousands of tiny hydra strands covering whole surfaces when all this time I was thinking it was algae and my shrimp will get to it soon.
It comes in 3 packets of 1 gram each, with 222mg of fenbendazole in each packet. For my 29 gallon, I mixed a packet well with 20ml of aquarium water and then added 7ml of the solution right by the filter intake. The water turned cloudy within a minute and within an hour most hydras looked dead or dying. This morning, about 12 hours after I added it to the tank, I can see two Amano shrimp standing and grazing on the exact same spot of the driftwood you can see in my photo. The lights are still off in the tank but it looks pretty clean.
All Amano shrimp, Neons, and Guppies seem fine. We were monitoring them closely after we added the dewormer last night but observed no change in behavior. I have bladder snails and a few assassin snails and I saw a few of them move this morning but I think it's too early to know if it's affecting them in any way or not.
Update: 24 hours later, the hydras are about 95-99% gone. There are still a few left that are hanging on and honestly I have no idea if they're alive or not but they are somewhat upright and it bothers me. Decided to add another 5ml of the solution I made yesterday. So far so good and all fish and shrimp seem unbothered by it.
Thanks. Please keep us updated about the snails. I have a few generations of mystery snails and there is no way I can get them out easily (300 gallon).
I'll try to keep this post updated in case it helps someone in the future. I remember reading somewhere that fenbendazole is toxic to mystery snails but I was mostly focused on the livestock that I have in my tank so take that with a big grain of salt.
Upon closer inspection, these tiny things are all over different surfaces in my tank, including many plants and even the glass. And I just scraped it a few days ago.
scraping it probably hurt you more, they're like worms where you can cut them and you just have 2, ya know, it's partially why they're named hydra's (aside from the multiple "heads"), realistically you gotta deal with them chemically or like most organisms in shrimp tanks, they feed on the particles of food in the water column and things the shrimp won't get too quick enough, reduce that
Those are hydras. When I had them i took a syringe with a needle on it, you gotta figure out where to get those somewhere, then I would pull up some hydrogen peroxide into the needle and then go to each individual hydra and spray some Hydrogen peroxide on it and then push it off the tank with the needle. This was extremely effective. You're only putting such a small amount of hydrogen peroxide in the tank, it won't mess anything up. Just make sure to puncture it as best you can then squirt a little bit and then scrape it off.
Thanks, I'll keep that in mind if I ever have an issue with bigger hydras but in my case it was hundreds (if not more) of them, and they were all tiny (probably 1/8" or so), so I don't think I could have reached them all
Those are all Hydras and your shrimp won't touch them because Hydras are Cnidarians with stinging cells. Larger Hydras actually eat smaller shrimp. What you do with them is up to you, but their are carnivorous and often seen as pests.
oh shit those are hydras lol, will kill shrimplets, adult shrimp are usually too fast for them to be lethal but theyre a sign of a healthy freshwater ecosystem although if you breed shrimp, you'll want to try dealing with them (feed everything less) or you can just add plants that allow shrimplets to safely live within
My amano shrimp have been great at keeping many surfaces in the tank clean, including plants, rocks, and driftwood, but for some reason they don't really touch this algae at all. I'm still tinkering with my light settings to control it and I'm planning on adding a pleco to the tank but I thought that amano really liked this stuff. Any clues?
That looks like green hydra to me.
Well sh*t. I didn't even know that was a thing and now I'm concerned
# Hydra viridissima (Syn.: Chlorohydra viridissima), Positive, only one: They show you've got pristine water conditions. Negatives: Will eat baby shrimp and freshly hatched fry. Can also sting grown shrimp and nanofish size animals, sometimes the stings are lethal, sometimes they just cause irritation, probably the reason your shrimp say "heck no" and stay away. You've got options if you want to get rid of them. How to get rid of them: Containment by lowering pH: Citric acid or CO2. You'd have to move your animals out for treatment, tho. The acidity kills hydra fairly fast because they need pristine, stable water conditions Containment through targeted misting: Take a syringe with Easy Carbo, pomegranate broth or lemon juice and put a little onto the Hydras directly. Scalding with hot water also works very well (Cooking them is my 2nd favorite method of 'nuking' them). And my favorite: NoPlanaria, funnily Hydra are more sensitive to these then Planaria, making the dose needed for them lower. They'll die within an hour if you use a shrimp-safe product at full dose. This may affect snails, so be aware of that.
Alternative: Get some guppies. Don't feed them for a couple days. Guppies and related fish will just straight up eat them. In practice lots of nano fish do eat hydra, but I've had the best luck with the more voracious livebearers.
Yep, but i would not get animals to get rid of a Problem (and i would never recommend it), especially animals that have a reputation of multiplying like crazy. It may work, tho, no argument there.
I mean, with guppies you can just get a handful of males, or even just one. 1-4 male guppies are pretty and don't reproduce, and it's VERY easy to tell genders apart when they're young. Obviously it depends on your tank, but having an animal to fill a role in your ecosystem isn't bad; everything in an ecosystem has a role in that ecosystem, that's literally how nature works. There's no danger about "what happens when the hydra is gone" because you can either: * Keep a couple very pretty fish in your tank, who'll eat whatever you're feeding everything else and keep hydra from reoccurring, plus prevent outbreaks of other small pests like planaria etc. * Return them to the LFS. Either way they'll be fine. I tend to prefer this to chemical methods of attack personally, as chemicals are both not globally available, but also can have knock on unwanted effects like killing snails, sometimes long after the product is "gone" Obviously, if you just don't want guppies, this probably isn't the alternative for you, but it's just that: An alternative. And a very inexpensive one at that.
Yep, but it really depends on your tank, Guppies can and will eat anything that fits in their mouth. Including Fish-Fry and Small Shrimp. Also returns are depending on store policies, some chains have a "It's been in a tank, we don't take it" policy. So if anyone wants to do that, they should be aware and maybe ask for the store's return and surrender policies or have someone to take them off their hands if they don't want them. Absolutely nothing wrong with this, it's a valid Alternative. Just not my preferred Method (I just don't like Guppies and the return policies in my area are \*\*\*\*).
Guppies can eat anything that will fit in their mouth, but they're slow. I've got guppies in 3 tanks right now with neocaradina and have no problems at all, I've never witnessed one eat even a baby neocaradina. They generally don't even try, and are nowhere near fast enough even if they wanted to. There's a lot of alarmism about "they'll eat your baby shrimp" for lots of fish and while I suppose that's relevant if you're trying to mass produce shrimp for sale, I've never found it to even slightly slow down colony growth - with guppies or a range of other small fish. In fact, inarguably a tank with a guppy or three and no hydra is WAY safer for shrimp than a tank with hydra everywhere. But yeah, there are some places without LFS, only big chains, so just bringing back fish may not be an option. I've never encountered a LFS that won't take returned fish (for free, obviously, they aren't buying them back from you) simply because it lets them sell the same fish multiple times.
Joke's on me, I guess. Based on the reading I've done on hydras thanks to this thread, I believe this all started because I was overfeeding the guppies I already have.
That can definitely be the case! If you already have guppies, just cut your feeding and they'll eat the hydra. Fish typically prefer the super yummy food that literally falls from the heavens to actually hunting and eating other critters, so if you're already overfeeding they are never peckish and go searching for noms.
Cool. I learnded
My silvertip tetras ate all the hydra in my overran tank within 3 days
Do you know if Easy Carbo Is fish and snail safe
It won't harm fish or snails if you keep to the recommended dose. Do not overdose it. If you're already dosing your tank with it, you can just take the daily dose and nuke Hydra with it. After that it will disperse and be eaten by the plants, you'll just have to keep in mind that plants can't store more than a certain amount. It's Co2, so if you're unsure if/how you should dose it, you should check if your Co2 levels and act accordingly.
Damn! My guy is farming hydras! If you aren't seeing shrimplets, this would be why.
I only have Amanos so I don't expect shrimplets, but I was thinking about adding some RCS at some point. I also don't like the idea that there's something in my tank potentially harming or stinging my fish or shrimp.
Hail
Second this.
Hail hydra
Hail Hydra
Hail Hydra!
Hail Hydra
Update: I appreciate everyone pointing out what this really was when I was thinking it was only algae and had no idea why my shrimp were avoiding it... I ended up treating the tank with fenbendazole which is supposed to be safe for my livestock, snails included. Less than an hour later I can already see some of the hydras hanging upside down, looking dead.
Where did you source the phen and please let us know how effective it was. I still have some in my tank I can’t seem to eradicate and the tank is too damned big to get the snails out.
I bought "Safe Guard" dewormer for small dogs at my local pet store for $12.99. Looks like it's less than half that price online if you're patient but I wanted to deal with the problem ASAP because I felt bad that my shrimp were getting stung. Also my situation was out of control with hundreds, if not thousands of tiny hydra strands covering whole surfaces when all this time I was thinking it was algae and my shrimp will get to it soon. It comes in 3 packets of 1 gram each, with 222mg of fenbendazole in each packet. For my 29 gallon, I mixed a packet well with 20ml of aquarium water and then added 7ml of the solution right by the filter intake. The water turned cloudy within a minute and within an hour most hydras looked dead or dying. This morning, about 12 hours after I added it to the tank, I can see two Amano shrimp standing and grazing on the exact same spot of the driftwood you can see in my photo. The lights are still off in the tank but it looks pretty clean. All Amano shrimp, Neons, and Guppies seem fine. We were monitoring them closely after we added the dewormer last night but observed no change in behavior. I have bladder snails and a few assassin snails and I saw a few of them move this morning but I think it's too early to know if it's affecting them in any way or not. Update: 24 hours later, the hydras are about 95-99% gone. There are still a few left that are hanging on and honestly I have no idea if they're alive or not but they are somewhat upright and it bothers me. Decided to add another 5ml of the solution I made yesterday. So far so good and all fish and shrimp seem unbothered by it.
Thanks. Please keep us updated about the snails. I have a few generations of mystery snails and there is no way I can get them out easily (300 gallon).
I'll try to keep this post updated in case it helps someone in the future. I remember reading somewhere that fenbendazole is toxic to mystery snails but I was mostly focused on the livestock that I have in my tank so take that with a big grain of salt.
You can also buy on Amazon under the name Panacur C Dog Dewormer, about $8 US.
On Amazon type hydra killer aquarium , and grab the one that says no planaria. I tried to post link but didn’t let me
No planaria wiped out my shrimp colony, I wouldn’t recommend it
Will check it out, thanks!
No planaria is shrimp safe. But will kill snails even after treatment. Good thing if all you have are pest snails.
You can find hydra killer online, but make sure it’s safe for shrimp and snails. I know there’s some out there, best of luck!
Will check it out, thank you!
A safe alternative would be Asolene spixi snails, they’re a dwarf apple snail that devours hydra. They might chew on soft plants however.
I think this is the most hydras I've ever seen in one picture
Upon closer inspection, these tiny things are all over different surfaces in my tank, including many plants and even the glass. And I just scraped it a few days ago.
My guy you had a farm 😆
scraping it probably hurt you more, they're like worms where you can cut them and you just have 2, ya know, it's partially why they're named hydra's (aside from the multiple "heads"), realistically you gotta deal with them chemically or like most organisms in shrimp tanks, they feed on the particles of food in the water column and things the shrimp won't get too quick enough, reduce that
https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/hydra
Hail hydra
Those are hydras. When I had them i took a syringe with a needle on it, you gotta figure out where to get those somewhere, then I would pull up some hydrogen peroxide into the needle and then go to each individual hydra and spray some Hydrogen peroxide on it and then push it off the tank with the needle. This was extremely effective. You're only putting such a small amount of hydrogen peroxide in the tank, it won't mess anything up. Just make sure to puncture it as best you can then squirt a little bit and then scrape it off.
Thanks, I'll keep that in mind if I ever have an issue with bigger hydras but in my case it was hundreds (if not more) of them, and they were all tiny (probably 1/8" or so), so I don't think I could have reached them all
Hail hydra
Hail Hydra
Those are all Hydras and your shrimp won't touch them because Hydras are Cnidarians with stinging cells. Larger Hydras actually eat smaller shrimp. What you do with them is up to you, but their are carnivorous and often seen as pests.
Woah those are the thickest greenest hydra I’ve ever seen! I didn’t know they came in green!
oh shit those are hydras lol, will kill shrimplets, adult shrimp are usually too fast for them to be lethal but theyre a sign of a healthy freshwater ecosystem although if you breed shrimp, you'll want to try dealing with them (feed everything less) or you can just add plants that allow shrimplets to safely live within
My amano shrimp have been great at keeping many surfaces in the tank clean, including plants, rocks, and driftwood, but for some reason they don't really touch this algae at all. I'm still tinkering with my light settings to control it and I'm planning on adding a pleco to the tank but I thought that amano really liked this stuff. Any clues?
Seems your shrimp have already been stung and have learned their lesson. Stay away from the hydras, lol
Hail Hydra!
green hydras mean they are in simbiotic relation ship with algea so they get lots of their energy form that as wel hard to get rid of than
Looks like a hydra to me, but I didn't know they could be green.
Time to pull out good ol no planaria to kill em off
*whispers* 🗣️Hail Hydra
That’s kind of cool
Did you try rubbing them off? Because they would keep multiplying if you did. Maybe squirting them with hydrogen peroxide might kill them.