Hydra

cutting down on feeding, scrape the hydra loose and vac em out
 
bushwhacker said:
cutting down on feeding, scrape the hydra loose and vac em out
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They haven't had any food added to the tank today.

These things are little! And with my eyes going bad over the past few years, its really hard to see them on the front glass. Let alone try to find them all over the tank to try to suck them up in a gravel vac.
 
SMinNC said:
From what I've read they will eat anything small, including water fleas and small fish. And I have to presume, this means snails too.

And like I mentioned in one of my other post. I'm thinking the starving the snails won't work...


I haven't been feeding a whole lot really. Maybe the equivelent of an algae waffer a day. And now that there are hundreds of snails. What is feed is gone in no time.

Gravel Vac - I haven't actually done this yet.
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I knew that hydra eat fry, but I didn't think that was relevant to your tank because you said it was snail only.

You said you only feed the equivalent of one algae wafer?
Alright, then cutting back on feeding isn't an option.

You also said you've never gravel vacuumed?
You NEED to do this, that's probably one of the main reasons (possibly the only) you have the hydra.
 
I'm going to see about hooking the gravel vac up to my hot magmum tomarrow morning. I'll be using the micron filter in it.

I did run it for a few hrs a week and a half ago. Up until then all I had done was dip out 10-12 gallons for a wc.

I really just got my population(snail) explosion about 2 weeks ago now. Which is why I haven't ever done any vacuming. The "snails"(for my brothers dwarf puffers) is what this tank was all about, when I started it. And basically for "something" to do. Now its turnt into a First "really" Planted Tank Experiment, thing.

I also have Flouite under the gravel. So there still won't be any "deep" cleaning. But yea, there's gotta be some snail poo in there now. lol It did literally go from. WooWhooo "A" snail. To, cool I see some egss and 3 snails now. To yea, we're getting some more now. To poof! snails!!!! :)
 
red_wall said:
I knew that hydra eat fry, but I didn't think that was relevant to your tank because you said it was snail only.
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But if they aren't eating snails, what are they eating?
It sounds like they need something in a material way to me. And not just living off of whatever in the water column? I guess they could be doing, just, that. There's probably all kinds of good reasons for them to thrive in this set-up.

When I ran the magnum. I had taken an intake tube and put it on the the outlet side. Mainly because I can't stand this new thing they have on them now, that sends the water in two different directions. I was going for the whirlpool affect. There wasn't all that much stuff stirring around. I'd expected alot more than I saw. I guess this is one reason while I'm hesitant to believe cutting back on food would have much of an affect on anything, except the snails.
 
How long are you leaving your lights on? Most people here will disagree but I do honestly believe that reducing the light to the tank will also help. I had a MASSIVE and I mean MASSIVE outbreak of these in my shrimp tank I simply left the lights off for a few days and voila 98% was gone.
 
I uesed a faily fast and inexspensive approach, guppies! yep.. don't feed them and they will eat them right up!
also read an article that said to turn the heat down and freeze them out or blacken most of your tank and they will go to the light & u can just vac them right up!
 
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