Hydroids in Brine Shrimp Eggs?

[deetu]

I was thinking about the JB magnetic hatcher that vlangel was going to try using in her dwarf seahorse tank.  Then I started thinking, if that worked, why not try a self feeding station using decapsulated brine shrimp eggs?  Sounds good, huh?  I made a small hatchery out of leftover plastic, attached an airline, suction cup to back... looks good.

 

I put 5 drops of the egg solution into a cup, added about 12cc of my water to dilute, let the eggs settle to the bottom, then sucked them out with an eye dropper putting them into my cute little hatchery.  Instantly a bunch of eggs came floating out... need to make it deeper...but many stayed in the air bubbles.

In the morning I was excited to see my little sea monkeys swimming around.  IT WORKS! .. but what is that?  Hydroids!!  Two on the back wall, three on the side wall!! 

I ended up finding 9 from just 5 drops of solution!  This totally shocked and confused me. How many would there have been if I used a whole capful?

 

I chose rusalty, aqua culture nursery farms because they advertised they were "Shell free and sterilized with no preservatives", which I believed meant that any pest would be gone.  I always read that decapsulating kills pests too.  They also said, "If you feed our ANF Decapsulated Brine Shrimp Eggs to your tank directly, the eggs that don't get eaten by your fish will eventually hatch on their own after 24hrs."  Seemed like the best for my experiment. 

I contacted the company after finding the boogers and he said "there will always be some hatch out of hydra" "a small percentage per hatch" and I must have gotten "an accumulation of higher densities of hydra eggs" from what I pulled... it was 5 drops! 

But he also said,"Hydroids are not deadly to dwarf seahorses."  Where all the seahorse sites say the opposite.

 

I am so confused...  

Even if I hatched in an external soda cone hatchery, there will be hydroids in the bunch.

I never hear of people having this problem...  Is it all eggs or just this company?

So how do you keep that from happening then? How do you keep them from your tank?

[seabass]

I believe there is a risk from any brand.  I decap my own eggs.  Now I don't keep seahorses, but I haven't noticed hydroids either.  Decapping does "reduce" the risk of hydroids.  With the relatively inexpensive cost of brine shrimp eggs, I would try another brand and decap them myself (it adds a little work, but isn't too bad).

[deetu]

On 7/14/2019 at 4:28 AM, seabass said:

I believe there is a risk from any brand.  I decap my own eggs.  Now I don't keep seahorses, but I haven't noticed hydroids either.  Decapping does "reduce" the risk of hydroids.  With the relatively inexpensive cost of brine shrimp eggs, I would try another brand and decap them myself (it adds a little work, but isn't too bad).

Thank you

Yeah, I have a problem with the smell of bleach, that was why I decided to try buying them already done, even if it was more expensive.   I'll give it a try though because the experimental part seemed to be working.

What brand do you use?

[seabass]

San Francisco Bay