What are these lil' buggers?

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lol ooooops. I guess I need to be more aware of genders in the future...lol. Please accept my deepest apologies!!!!!


ROFL! It was funny! No worries man:p People tell me all the time I have a girls name :mad: but never I am a girl:p So you go down in history as a first :lol:
 
ROFL!!!! Yeah...I was like 120lbs when I took that pic a few years ago. Now I'm 158lbs so I've moved from algae boy to swamp thing:D
 
ROFL!!!! Yeah...I was like 120lbs when I took that pic a few years ago. Now I'm 158lbs so I've moved from algae boy to swamp thing

i still like the name sprout but swamp thing works too :lol:
 
returnofsid said:
Rod, what can you tell me about them? Are they harmful? Do they come and go in phases? Does a large population of them tell me anything about my water parameters?

If you are seeing a large population of the hydroids in the medusa stage, it tellls me that the flow in your tank is very low. They usually get washed away quickly and end up in powerheads etc. Hydroids will thrive in water that is less than perfect, but can also live in very good water conditions IME. The medusa stage will come and go, but the actual hydroid colony will "be there"

I dont have a whole lot of experience with them in a reef tank. I used to have them badly in a grow out tank when I was breeding Banggai (96-97 I think). The grow out tank had no other circulation other than an open air bubbler. The medusa hydroids would sometimes get so thick it loked like the scene from finding nemo. The hydroids would thrive on the brine that I was feeding. The medusa hydroids would sting/kill the juvie banggai.
 
Jake, that thing that looks like a grain of rice with tentacles I'm pretty sure is a baby aiptasia.
 
I'm pretty sure these are not baby aiptasia....I do believe they are the hydroid. Looks exactly like every pic I've seen of them. I do however have quite a bit of flow in the tank. At the moment, I don't have any corals in there to worry about getting stung though. I'm in the middle of a hyposalinity and only have 1 fish in there. Guess I'll just watch the hydroid, do more research and figure out if I need to do anything about them before returning corals to the tank. One thing I'm really surprised about...I was under the impression that the hyposalinity was pretty agravating for everyone other than fish...ie..inverts and so on. I'm finding that the small sponges are growing like crazy, as are the featherdusters and I'm finding quite a few baby snails lately.
 
my featherdusters ,that were on tiny peices of LR, died about 3 days into the hypo treatment
 
I'm pretty sure these are not baby aiptasia....I do believe they are the hydroid. Looks exactly like every pic I've seen of them. I do however have quite a bit of flow in the tank. At the moment, I don't have any corals in there to worry about getting stung though. I'm in the middle of a hyposalinity and only have 1 fish in there. Guess I'll just watch the hydroid, do more research and figure out if I need to do anything about them before returning corals to the tank. One thing I'm really surprised about...I was under the impression that the hyposalinity was pretty agravating for everyone other than fish...ie..inverts and so on. I'm finding that the small sponges are growing like crazy, as are the featherdusters and I'm finding quite a few baby snails lately.

hey that's awesome you got some feather dusters and baby snails :) .
I have a feeling they'll go away after a while since you got nothing in there yet.
About the feather dusters, some fishes eat them :p.
my six line ate all of mine i believe, i used to have a rock full of them and now they're all gone.
 

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