microscopic white palm trees

Hi Dirk

I have noticed in my Angle tanks that there are white tube worm looking things growing all over the bottom and walls of 3 of my tanks (all BBT), they look like 1 to 2 mm hight white palm trees waving in the current? The tanks are getting moderate sun light of late and were the sun hits the tank in the mornings there is a bit of green brownish algae growing nothing out of hand just spotting. they also do not have heaters in them as the days are still warm. Temp a constant 25-26 deg in the room thanks to one discus tank at 29-30 deg

Kind regards

Jason

 

I don't know too much about them, but that sounds like hydras to me.

 

Wat se gootis?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_(genus) yeap same here ..

 

Natural Aquariums - Hydra

 

Okay so they are relatively harmless then I take it, except in my fry tanks apparently, so I guess I’ll be scrubbing that on in the morning, it makes since now, they are only in the tanks that I feed BS in excess.

Thanks guys

 

Thats why they are there. They will also eat fry of smaller species.

 

Tubeworm-like? Possibly Bryozoa then http://www.feenixx.com/life-science/samples/a104-bryozoa.gif

Unfortunately, that's not the best picture, but they show such diversity it is difficult to get a 'classic' bryozoan

 

Seeing that all of you chirpers have replied, it only remains for me to mop up.

Yes Hydra, appears to be the problem here, freshly hatched brine shrimps are an ideal food for them. A good cleaning with a sponge and syphoning will get rid of most of them. They will be a problem with small fry and eat them just as readily as freshly hatched bs. So they are certainly not harmless and if they appear in your fry tanks you will have a problem.

Mzungu, I thought that I as a professor could write things that may not be understandable to the man in the street, but the following comment makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever: "Unfortunately, that's not the best picture, but they show such diversity it is difficult to get a 'classic' bryozoan", but maybe I am just too stupid.....

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

My apologies professor. What I meant was that bryozoan colonies show a wide degree of differences in appearance among different species. This makes it difficult to show a picture of a certain species as being representative of all bryozoans.

Then again, this is inconsequential, as it has clearly been decided that it's Hydra that is the problem here

Regards

 

Interresting. I know of the hydra, found some in my pond once and there was once a documentary exploring possibility's of immortality in nature and there was this scientist who experimented with them and according to him they completely renew all of their cells within a few days or weeks, which makes them biologically immortal, i.e if all the right conditions are met.

Anyway, I didn't know about the Bryozoan, but I once found this "colony" of this filter feeding type of organism in our pond plant sump and it looked like it spread through "roots" (so to speak) interconnecting each "polyp" they were much smaller than avg hydra and seemed as though they can retract their "brushes", they were attached to the side.
Makes me think it was the same organism as Bryozoan.

 

Thanks prof they are being scrubbed out as of this afternoon.

 

Are these Hydra connected to bad water conditions? I have a few in my small plant keeping tank. There's no fish and I don't feed anything.