Hydra dormant in the Coops brine shrimp eggs?

[Silver112]

Hello all. This is my first time on here and have some questions that some of you may be able to help with. I have been in the hobby for 30+ years. I had never seen a hydra in person until now. I recently purchased the ziss brine shrimp hatchery, salt and eggs from the Co-op. I hatched by first batch a couple days ago. I had never gone with live brine shrimp before but thought I would give it a try. Everything seemed to go great. However, 24 hours later I found these little green things all over my tank! On closer inspection they are indeed hydra. So I wiped down what I could to try to physically remove as much as I could. I know damaged hydra can multiply into more. I already had a second batch of shrimp eggs percolating. And went ahead and added them. Another 24 hours later and my tank is covered even more with hydra. The only addition to my tanks in Months has been the introduction of the brine shrimp. And since this is my first time seeing them in over 30 years in the hobby I find it too much of a coincidence! Has anyone else noticed this? Do hydra naturally hitchhike in with brine shrimp eggs?

[Andy's Fish Den]

Hydra require small foods, and baby brine shrimp are perfect for them.  Cory had a video not long ago about hydra and what fish will eat them.

How to Get Rid of Hydra the EASY Way - YouTube

I have had hydra pop up several times over my years of fish keeping, and I just received my first batch of co-op brine shrimp eggs. I would get them in tanks when I was feeding bbs or other small foods heavily. 

[gardenman]

Do hydra hitchhike on brine shrimp eggs? Brine shrimp eggs are harvested in salt water and hydra are freshwater, so no. You probably had a small hydra population that was largely dormant until food came along in the form of baby brine shrimp. When fed well hydra can double in number every two days, so it doesn't take long before that one starving, unnoticed hydra became a lot of hydra. In just twenty days one hydra becomes 512 at that rate. Day one, one hydra. Day three you then have two hydra. On day five you're up to four. Every two days the number doubles and by day twenty it's 512 and very noticeable. 

[TheDukeAnumber1]

One of the reasons baby brine is such a great live food. Since they are produced and we hatch them in salt water, unwanted freshwater pests don't make it in.

[ccurtis]

Aquarium Co-Op just out out a blog article on how to get rid of hydra.

https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/hydra

 

[RockMongler]

It's almost certainly that you have already had hydra around in your tank, but the BBS are the perfect food for hydra to proliferate very successfully.  I know my tank has hydra, but 99% of the time I don't see them.  I only see them if I end up feeding too much and my tank gets out of balance.  BBS are the perfect sized food for hydra, and you just gave them a great big pile of food.

[Dancing Matt]

When I first started feeding BBS I saw hydra. After a while the tank balanced out for me. I ended up feeding less BBS and fed more flake/pellets/hikari and the hydra "disappeared". I now feed daily/every other live and frozen BBS and haven't seen hydra in months. I would doubt that the eggs brought hydra, most likely they were there and exploded because of the good feeding conditions live baby brine shrimp creates. Maybe try playing around with feeding and see if you can get the tank to balance.