Help! There are Hydra in my tank!

[Jackaroni]

Ok, I realize hydra are not a disease, but there is no listing for parasites, so here goes. I have a 12 gallon bookshelf tank that I am cycling. There has been no ammonia, nitrites or nitrates for nearly 2 weeks.  The tank is planted with Monte Carlo and spiral val. I also floated a small peace lily to help with the cycle. There was been an explosion of algae a few weeks ago and it is slowly diminishing. I currently have Amano Shrimp and 2 Nerite snails, along with some rams horn snails that must've hitched a ride on something. I am not feeding the shrimp at all as they are happily munching on algae.  I did toss a couple of small algae wafers in there one day last week to supplement the algae, but the shrimp weren't interested at all. Just noticed small whitish things attached to the glass a couple of days ago, but assumed they were Nerite eggs. I noticed tentacles today.  How do I get rid of these things? To complicate matters, I am going out of town in a few days and my house sitter has zero experience with aquariums. I am going to be gone for a week. Help!

[smm333]

I just had the same problem! I tried adding strawberry rasboras who did nothing, lol. I didn't want to do chemicals because of my mystery snail, so I bought spixi snails. They will eat hydra! If you can't find them, you can use a dog dewormer that is available on Amazon. Rob from flip aquatics has a video about hydra and planaria, and that's what he recommends. It will kill snails though, so you have to remove them! I just wanted to try a natural solution first. Good luck! 🙂

[Jackaroni]

One of the solutions that I've seen online is to starve the hydra out in a shrimp tank by not feeding the shrimp and having the shrimp eat algae only, but I was already doing that when the hydra appeared.  Chemical solutions involve a series of dosing and water changes, but I am not going to be around to do that, and am afraid that I will face a hydra explosion if I wait until I return. Maybe if I dose the tank once and do a water change I can slow the population growth, but there are a number of tiny rams horn snails in the tank that would probably be killed from the treatment and would lead to an ammonia spike, and I won't be around to do a water change. I'm not new to the hobby, I've had a 55 gallon planted tank for over 35 years, but just now decided that I wanted a shrimp tank. I have NEVER had any kind of a pest problem before, other than hitch hiker snails that I dealt with by adding assassin snails, so I am totally out of my comfort zone!

[Jackaroni]

I'm not sure, but I think that one of my Nerite snails may be feasting on the Hydra.  I watched as the snail approached one Hydra that had tentacles extended and when the snail got close, the Hydra curled up into a ball like it was terrified.  Keeping my fingers crossed.

[Lennie]

On 3/9/2023 at 10:26 PM, Jackaroni said:

I'm not sure, but I think that one of my Nerite snails may be feasting on the Hydra.  I watched as the snail approached one Hydra that had tentacles extended and when the snail got close, the Hydra curled up into a ball like it was terrified.  Keeping my fingers crossed.

As far as I know, only spixis really eat them but they may be hard to find