Please Help ID

[ReeferND]

@banasophiaYour tank is absolutely amazing. My hopes are to be there someday. Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't have issues like this if my tank was heavy stocked. I don't have much in there and sometimes I feel that is more of a struggle than have corals wall to wall. Do you have a build thread or anything? 

 

Thanks for the advice. I think I am just going to keep an eye on the corals and not feed for a while. This really seems to have started when I started reef chili and reef roids. Maybe too much nutrients.

[BrentSA]

2 hours ago, ReeferND said:

@Pezking182 @banasophiathanks for all the help. The veins are definitely something growing on the glass. My next big question is what should I do? Some people say it clears up, just quit feeding the tank.....some say you have to tears the tank down and start over....others say removed rock and sterilize it (since my hydroids are the glass and rock I don't see this doing much other knocking down the population for a moment). I really need some suggestions here, should I take my corals out and scrub them so they live longer? Should I setup a hospital tank and put all life in there and strip the tank down. Should I leave it?

Thanks everyone. I really appreciate all the help

What do you mean by scrub them ? If you mean use a clothe or foam then no , you will damage them, dip them  . As for your glass you are going to have to scrape the glass and use a siphon to collect what's coming off , a second pair of hands would help considerably , one to person to scrape and one to collect what's coming off .

 

 Look , as for the what to do , there are lots of ways to go about it , it's what works for you,  if you can take the like rock out to treat it then do that if you can't,  increase water changes for a while instead of just once a week . But also try target feeding if you are not already doing that  and give less to bring down the nutrients in the tank and watch your water parameters. 

[ReeferND]

Yes, I mean scrub.....I mean the hydroids are all over them and since hydroids are cnidarians the dip won't do anything.....at least that is my assumption since the dip doesn't kill the coral it won't kill the hydroids. Am i wrong here? I would rather hurt the coral and it live  than have it die because of the hydroids. My 2 cents.

 

I agree with the glass cleaning and rock clean up. I will be starting that this evening. I am also dosing 2ml of hydrogen peroxide to the tank just in case these aren't hydroids but some weird white algae. This is day 2 with no bad effects yet.

[A Little Blue]

2 hours ago, ReeferND said:

@banasophiaYour tank is absolutely amazing. My hopes are to be there someday. Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't have issues like this if my tank was heavy stocked. I don't have much in there and sometimes I feel that is more of a struggle than have corals wall to wall. Do you have a build thread or anything? 

 

Thanks for the advice. I think I am just going to keep an eye on the corals and not feed for a while. This really seems to have started when I started reef chili and reef roids. Maybe too much nutrients.

Wished we knew exactly what we are dealing with. You gonna have to make a call how to deal with it while being bombarded with hypotheticals. 

Personally, I would try to save and quarantine what’s left and bleach everything else. 

[ReeferND]

@A Little Blue I agree. it will be up to me. What I think I am going to do is try a product called Hydroxs. Supposedly, it is used by many sea horse keepers as their tanks are particularly prone to hydroid outbreaks. There a few really impressive reef tank uses out there as long as your careful. It is made batch by batch from what I understand to your particular tank size and animals. Obviously, this sounds too good to be true but there are quite a few examples of it working. I am curious enough to try. Cost is $46 for the nuvo 30l. If it doesn't work then I will taking all life out and sterilizing the tank. Problem: my emerald crabs are covered in this stuff. Might just have to let them go.......which sucks because they are so fun to watch.

[BrentSA]

I sincerely wish you all the best , I really hope you get things to how they should be, please just don't give up on the hobby and I cant wait until we get to see pics of your tank at 100% !🐠

[ReeferND]

@BrentSA I really appreciate that! I know this is just another hurtle that a reefer must get through. I also know I won't give up and it is because of comments like yours and my love for corals, reefs, and this community. I really hope one day I can go back to this thread with some awesome pictures of a stable, healthy, thriving reef. All your pictures, the videos on BRS, and these forums make me not only envious but ambitious. Thanks to everyone and if you have anymore suggestions please let me know.

[A Little Blue]

I truly hope that this Hudroxs does the job & get you back on track. I am just curious what conditions led to such an intrusive outbreak? 

Was it something in your live rock or something that was introduced on coral frag? I couldn’t find anything useful on this subject. 

[ReeferND]

I truely believe it came in on one of the emerald crabs. To my best, I tried to scrub what I assumed was algae off his back and he looked pretty clean when I introduced him. But he and his mate are completely covered in this stuff and if I remember properly they always seemed to have what I ignorantly thought was algae on them. I truely think it is this hydroids. That's my best guess.

[A Little Blue]

7 minutes ago, ReeferND said:

I truely believe it came in on one of the emerald crabs. To my best, I tried to scrub what I assumed was algae off his back and he looked pretty clean when I introduced him. But he and his mate are completely covered in this stuff and if I remember properly they always seemed to have what I ignorantly thought was algae on them. I truely think it is this hydroids. That's my best guess.

Interesting. I have heard that Emerald crabs feed on hydroids but this kind looks unfamiliar. 

[banasophia]

4 hours ago, ReeferND said:

@banasophiaYour tank is absolutely amazing. My hopes are to be there someday. Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't have issues like this if my tank was heavy stocked. I don't have much in there and sometimes I feel that is more of a struggle than have corals wall to wall. Do you have a build thread or anything? 

 

Thanks for the advice. I think I am just going to keep an eye on the corals and not feed for a while. This really seems to have started when I started reef chili and reef roids. Maybe too much nutrients.

Thanks so much for the compliment. No, no build thread yet... gotta do that one of these days. Only up and running since 3/3 so we’ll see how it fares longer term. 

 

Agree we still really don’t know what you’re dealing with. It would be good to get a more definitive ID. I just showed your pics to my trusted guy at my LFS and he didn’t know either. 😞 Wondering if @johnmaloney from ReefCleaners may be able to help with the ID... I know his expertise is dealing with nuisance algae, but perhaps he’s seen this before? I’d probably also post on Facebook reefing groups as well, to see if anyone there has seen this and overcome it. Seems like it might be rare, so maybe not many people have seen it... 

 

I know I mentioned I didn’t want to do anything drastic on my tank to get rid of my hydroids, but if you aren’t as far along with stocking maybe you have more flexibility in eradicating whatever this is. 

 

 

[ReeferND]

Hey folks! So I wanted to give an update. Today is the end of day 2 with peroxide treatment. I went down after getting my kids to sleep and my tank has never looked so clear. The worst part about this hobby is knowing what caused it.....was it the water changes? Peroxide? Luck? Time? However, I will continue with the peroxide treatment for a while yet. In fact, the veins on the glass seem to be less apparent! Then paly and galaxea are all opened too. Hammer and frogspawn are still hiding and the anemone is no where to be found. But perhaps progress!

[banasophia]

2 hours ago, A Little Blue said:

Interesting. I have heard that Emerald crabs feed on hydroids but this kind looks unfamiliar. 

Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping for - just picked up two emeralds and popped em in! 🤞🤞🤞

[ReeferND]

I absolutely think emeralds eat hydriods. In fact I can mine doing right now. I just wish they could reach their backs!!😀

[ReeferND]

You know everyone, I was looking around the forums on this and different sites. It's seems there are a lot of people that think they have a "strange/wierd white algae" and I am thinking alot of those reefers are having hydriods problems. I just heard back from Megan at FishNth which is the person that specializes in hydriods for sea horse tanks. She says what I have is the blanket type of hydriods. Now, she is trying to sell a product so her opinion can only be regarded as "maybe". But if even half of these people are truely having hydriods problems, we would be good fellow reefers to suggest hydroids to them. There are a lot of tank take downs regarding white algae and maybe all those people have to do is wait it out, increase water changes, and maybe dose peroxide. Just my thoughts. I was about to start over before writing this thread but the help you all have given me is amazing and I have learned so much. Knowledge = success in this hobby.

[banasophia]

1 hour ago, ReeferND said:

You know everyone, I was looking around the forums on this and different sites. It's seems there are a lot of people that think they have a "strange/wierd white algae" and I am thinking alot of those reefers are having hydriods problems. I just heard back from Megan at FishNth which is the person that specializes in hydriods for sea horse tanks. She says what I have is the blanket type of hydriods. Now, she is trying to sell a product so her opinion can only be regarded as "maybe". But if even half of these people are truely having hydriods problems, we would be good fellow reefers to suggest hydroids to them. There are a lot of tank take downs regarding white algae and maybe all those people have to do is wait it out, increase water changes, and maybe dose peroxide. Just my thoughts. I was about to start over before writing this thread but the help you all have given me is amazing and I have learned so much. Knowledge = success in this hobby.

Are you planning on trying the Hydroxs? Keep me posted!!! 🙂  

[johnmaloney]

On 8/1/2018 at 11:33 PM, ReeferND said:

Thanks everyone for the support. To answer some questions. My filtration is a tunze 9001 skimmer, filter floss, carbon and gfo...both in a bag and not a reactor. This is on top of 40% weekly water changes. It looks very similar to the hydroids but doesn't have the little masses associated with it. It truly does look like an venous or arterial system. There is no green in it so I assume it is not photosynthetic. I have included some images that I hop you are better capable of seeing. I also included some pictures of what I can only call white algae on the rocks and I cannot help but wonder if they are connected\the same thing just on different surfaces. I dosed 2ml of hydrogen peroxide to the tank.......not sure if smart or bad. Again sorry for the photos but I am not good at taking pictures with these lights. 

 

Thanks again! I really hope I can save my animals!

Looks like coralline on this rock, are you referring to the neon colored bluish green looking algae in this picture?

[johnmaloney]

On 8/1/2018 at 11:45 PM, ReeferND said:

Alright folks. I just turned my whites all the way up for these. Much better, some better than others. I am now seeing a resemblance to the hydroids. In the one pic, you can see the dead paly head with the same white stuff on it.

This looks like just fine hair algae to me. It doesn't appear to branch, I think that is just debris stuck to the algae giving it those irregular features on the algae. Larger magnification may help. Have you plucked some to see it up close? If you do that and put it on a white piece of a paper the little bit when collected will give you an idea of color. Looks like it is green to me.

[banasophia]

5 hours ago, johnmaloney said:

This looks like just fine hair algae to me. It doesn't appear to branch, I think that is just debris stuck to the algae giving it those irregular features on the algae. Larger magnification may help. Have you plucked some to see it up close? If you do that and put it on a white piece of a paper the little bit when collected will give you an idea of color. Looks like it is green to me.

Thanks so much for checking this out @johnmaloney, great suggestion to pluck some out and examine more closely like that. One thing that seems unusual is that there is some filamentous veiny looking growth on the back glass, which you can see in the second and fifth pictures in your second post. Does it seem like the same organism, or maybe two different things going on?

[ReeferND]

I ordered the Hydroxs and will let everyone know how it goes. This morning the tank is looking better but when I took the corals out to dip them, I am definitely losing one head on my frogspawn and several heads on the paly. We will see this afternoon if the dip helped at all. I did another 40% wc today. That is 3 this week so I have replace over 100% of the water since noticing this problem. 

 

I took some out and put it on white paper, it still looks white/clear to me. Wish I had a microscope to examine further. I really hope it is just hair algae. I am going on vacation today through next Saturday so I won't begin treating the tank with Hydroxs until then. If I get back and everything is looking better, I will skip the Hydroxs treatment and save it for dipping new introductions to the tank. But great suggestion @johnmaloneythanks!

[banasophia]

6 minutes ago, ReeferND said:

I ordered the Hydroxs and will let everyone know how it goes. This morning the tank is looking better but when I took the corals out to dip them, I am definitely losing one head on my frogspawn and several heads on the paly. We will see this afternoon if the dip helped at all. I did another 40% wc today. That is 3 this week so I have replace over 100% of the water since noticing this problem. 

 

I took some out and put it on white paper, it still looks white/clear to me. Wish I had a microscope to examine further. I really hope it is just hair algae. I am going on vacation today through next Saturday so I won't begin treating the tank with Hydroxs until then. If I get back and everything is looking better, I will skip the Hydroxs treatment and save it for dipping new introductions to the tank. But great suggestion @johnmaloneythanks!

I hadn’t heard of Hydroxs before... will definitely research further as an option for my hydroids. 

[banasophia]

On 8/2/2018 at 6:48 PM, A Little Blue said:

Interesting. I have heard that Emerald crabs feed on hydroids but this kind looks unfamiliar. 

 

On 8/2/2018 at 9:02 PM, ReeferND said:

I absolutely think emeralds eat hydriods. In fact I can mine doing right now. I just wish they could reach their backs!!😀

 

 

I can confirm that emerald crabs do indeed eat hydroids - woohoo! 

 

 

 

[mndfreeze]

Those definitely looks like colonial hydroids to me.  I have some in my tank but they only grow in the dark, shaded areas of my tank out of the bright light, and something is eating mine because they were bad for a while and now almost gone.

 

Colonial hydroids are really tiny individuals that look almost like super tiny dandelion puffballs, then huge groups of them together.   

 

My pom pom crab seems to always be around mine.  It's possible he is feeding his nems with em or something, who knows.  I can only speculate at this point.  Be careful when using chemical agents with your more sensitive stuff like corals and inverts.

 

[ReeferND]

Alright. I added the first dose of four of Hydroxs to the tank. Fingers crossed. I will keep you all posted on what happens. Send me good vibes......nervous.

[banasophia]

5 hours ago, ReeferND said:

Alright. I added the first dose of four of Hydroxs to the tank. Fingers crossed. I will keep you all posted on what happens. Send me good vibes......nervous.

Eagerly waiting for your updates. 🤞🤞🤞