What is this stuff sticking on my aquarium glass?

[Dark Jester]

That's just it though, if they come back when you overfeed then they never really went away completely. Unless you are adding new plants or something to bring in fresh specimens. It only takes 1 to repopulate an entire aquarium once they get more food available.

They don't do anything to remove ammonia or nitrates though, so there is no real benefit to having them. They feed on floating particles in the water, algae and tiny bits of food. They're basically a small form of freshwater anenome. They don't actually hurt anything either though unless you are keeping shrimp or are breeding fish. They have been known to kill tiny shrimp and fish fry.

As you said though, not overfeeding keeps the population low enough that you probably won't even notice them unless you get a magnifying glass and start inspecting your decorations or plants.

 

[scalesandfins]

yea thats technically true.
but out of sight out of mind
i just hate when they make it look like my water is cloudy. i love my crystal clear floating in air crispy water

 

[jschall]

Hydras are biologically immortal.
They need to be somehow killed if you want them to go away.

 

[AmazonianFan]

hmm well its kind of hard to tell what it is, could be some hair algae for all i can see. but whatever it is you should clean it off if it is unpleasent to look at.

 

[scalesandfins]

ok what i have is not hydra... mine have little balls on the ends.

 

[Dark Jester]

ok what i have is not hydra... mine have little balls on the ends.

If the tentacles are retracted (i.e. just ate something), they do look like little balls on the end of a thread. You'd probably see some with their tentacles out, waving in the water current too though. A lot of sites say they get up to an inch long, so I wasn't sure that's what I had in the beginning as I've never had one longer than 2-3mm.

If it's not hydra then I'm not sure. Need a better picture. Are there any on the decorations inside the tank that you could focus the camera on instead? I had the same problem trying to focus mine on the glass itself, so I aimed at a plant inside and it worked great.

 

[AquaticMonsters]

Anybody know the easiest way getting rid of these hydras?

 

[scalesandfins]

yea mine are hydra. mine all have balls. they kinda look like spores or somthin. its usually three balls to each stem. and they are tiny. like maybe a dime thickness tall. it looks like fuz on my glass.

 

[Dark Jester]

Anybody know the easiest way getting rid of these hydras?

Gourami eat them. They'll never get rid of all of them though.

If looking for a chemical solution, Fenbendazole is one of the few things that works works and is relatively fish safe. Here's a thread about it:
http://www.planetinverts.com/killing_planaria_and_hydra.html

As mentioned previously, I'd buy the liquid fenbendazole solution online. trying to disolve it yourself is a pain in the butt. Even powdering the granules and trying to stir it in hot water didn't really disolve it much. Has to be disolved to be effective at killing hydra.

 

[AquaticMonsters]

Gourami eat them. They'll never get rid of all of them though.

If looking for a chemical solution, Fenbendazole is one of the few things that works works and is relatively fish safe. Here's a thread about it:
http://www.planetinverts.com/killing_planaria_and_hydra.html

As mentioned previously, I'd buy the liquid fenbendazole solution online. trying to disolve it yourself is a pain in the butt. Even powdering the granules and trying to stir it in hot water didn't really disolve it much. Has to be disolved to be effective at killing hydra.

cool i will order the liquid solution online and ill update my success here of losing these hydras!