# I have Hydra, here's an experiment in killing them



## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

My plant tank is a pain in the ass. I'm determined to get it working properly, and the plants themselves are quite healthy, but aside from a planaria/nematode outbreak that occurred before I had fed my fish one single time (he went two weeks without eating) I now have hydra in my tank. For those people who are not familiar with them, they are basically the freshwater equivalent of anemones. They look like this










and basically, those lovely little tentacles sting their prey like a jellyfish injecting a venom that paralyzes or kills the prey before it feeds. If you wipe them off the glass, every little piece that you break it into will grow into a new disgusting hydra. Thankfully, they don't grow larger than 1/4 inch but the thought of these disgusting things in my tank is unsettling to say the least.

So I'm going to kill these fuckers tonight, post haste and all that. The general method suggested by Don H is copper, which I'm sure would work but when it comes to meds I try and use them as little as possible. What I had heard however is that you can raise the water temperature in the tank to 110 fahrenheit for 10 minutes which should cause them all to drop dead. I thought it might be of interest to other people in the forum to see how this works out for me, so they too can have an option to get rid of these monsters without using medications.

My method will be as such,

1) purchase a real thermometer that goes up to at least 120 fahrenheit

2) Remove the fish and put him in a bucket of water (agitation shouldn't be necessary since it will be a short period of time)

3) Boil some dechlorinated (don't want to kill our bio filtration) water and slowly add it to the tank to bring the temperature up to 110 fahrenheit

4) Have a smoke

5) Remove 50 % of the water in the tank to bring the temperature back to something more acceptable to the fish

6) Re-aclimatize the fish to the new water temperature since assumedly it will be different than the temperature in the bucket.

I'll be doing this in a few hours, so if someone sees an issue with my methods, please let me know before I attempt it, otherwise I'll let you all know how it goes. Worst case scenario is that it doesn't work and I have to use copper medications after all, but when that's my initial option anyway it's not such a big deal.

Lastly, I'm starting to soak my plants in bleach before adding them. I always said that I wouldn't be too worried if snails came in the tank, but the range of disgusting non snail sh*t that's coming in on my plants is too much to bear.


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## nfldRBP (Nov 30, 2003)

Heh, just dont forget step #2.


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## rbp 4 135 (Mar 2, 2004)

do you know for a fact that 110 will actually kill them?


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

rbp 4 135 said:


> do you know for a fact that 110 will actually kill them?
> [snapback]830843[/snapback]​


No but then I don't know for a fact that copper will kill them either since the only way I can know for sure is by trying it myself.

Got my digital thermometer from the lfs and will be trying out the method right now. Let you guys know how it goes in about half an hour, and then I'll update again in a few days to see if they come back or not.


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

Alright, a few things about this experiment. First of all 110 fahrenheit is HOT. Really f*cking HOT, it doesn't sound like much but I don't even take my showers as hot as that when I put my finger in the tank. There is no way any aquatic animal except one designed for very high heat could survive in that heat. I'm really confident that the hydras are dead.

That said, it takes ALOT of boiling water to get a tank from 81.6 F up to 110 F, I probably ended up doing around a 100% water change over the course of this treatment. That's not too much of a big deal except the possibility for a chlorine spike worried me, so I overdosed like crazy on the water conditioner. This fish is irreplaceable and I couldn't risk it.

Even still, it's more work than I expected but by the same token, if it means I don't have to risk metal poisoning for my fish, I think it's worth it instead of using copper. We'll see if it's effective or not, I'm using a bag of ice to cool the water from 90 fahrenheit to 81 again.


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## mrodge (Nov 13, 2004)

dont forget step 4 dude


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## tweekie (Nov 3, 2004)

cant u just syphon the little feckers out while doing a water change?


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

tweekie said:


> cant u just syphon the little feckers out while doing a water change?
> [snapback]831663[/snapback]​


No they multiply really quickly and they're pretty small so they're hard to see. I doubt I'd be able to find all of them even if I was trying my hardest as they hide under plant leaves and in the gravel as well.


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## HighOctane (Jan 2, 2003)

Remind me to never get them... how did you get them in the first place?


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

hitchiked in from the plants the lfs sold me. The kind of crazy sh*t that's been springing up in that tank from the plants I wouldn't be surprised to go upstairs and see el chupacabra peering out from behind my java ferns


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## syd (Nov 6, 2004)

just piss in the tank


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

Right...

Anyway, as an update. It's twenty four hours later and no sign of any hydras in the tank. It's still early but this is definately promising, I know for sure that at least some of them are dead this way.


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## jonscilz (Dec 2, 2004)

sounds good... at least now we know how to handle these situations of parasites without chemicals... let us know if it still looks good tomorrow


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## syd (Nov 6, 2004)

lol.

you shoulda left them there they look cool


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## syd (Nov 6, 2004)

man u shoulda put some in a bowl to observe they look so weird like jellyfish or sumthing


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

That I might have done to look at them, and they were kind of interesting, but the thought of any kind of parasite in my tank is unsettling so theres no way I'd keep it with my fish.

Oh well, they're all dead now anyway


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

Just as an update, it has been over two weeks now, the hydra are most certainly very dead.


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## DonH (Jan 25, 2003)

Out of curiousity, did you take ammonia/nitrite readings through this experiment? I would assume that such a rapid change in temp would also affect the nitrifiers. I know a rapid drop in temp would cause this (especially to the more sensitive nitrite oxidizing nitrifiers).


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## elTwitcho (Jun 22, 2004)

I did a few days afterwards just to make sure I hadn't killed off the nitrifyers with chlorine (temperature hadn't even crossed my mind) and my readings were baseline 0 as they usually are. It might be that my plants made up for the nitrifyers that may have died off, but either way I had no issues.


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