Hydra in my fry tank!

[Joby]

Well my accidental spawning betta fry are 11 days old now and were doing quite well up to a couple of days ago

I found 3 dead on Christmas day and the numbers have slowly been dropping up till then. I've shone a torch on them and can only see lovely silver/green gossamar colours shining back at me, no sign of velvet. This morning one of my bigger ones ___ has a clamped tail although still eating.

I was looking through topics on diseases and noticed about the Hydra. Well I looked at pics of this and oh my goodness I have these on the big pebbles in my tank!

Could this be what is killing my fry? What do I do? I'm guessing I'll have to rip the tank apart and sterilise it all again, but what do I do with the fry in the mean time? I have 7 other tanks running so I can put the fry in a breeding net for now into one of the other tanks, probably the newest one which was set up yesterday. Its had the filter in a cycled tank for a week and I've put some gravel the gravel in as well so it shouldn't be too bad for them. There are only some male juvie guppies in there at present.

If I do get rid of it, won't it just come back again with the BBS? as I'm assuming it came from here in the first place.

Also, anything I can do for the fry like adding salt etc? anything else? I have a shop open that I can go to so if anyone can tell me any meds I might need that would be great

Am really cross about this as my babies were doing so well and were so big for how old they are too so thought they were really healthy

A copy of this is also posted in the Betta section

 

[Def]

Hey Joby,

http/fins.actwin.com/killietalk/month.9808/msg00117.html might help, as might this http/www.fortunecity.de/lindenpark/hunde...alAquarist.html

What are your plans for your betta fry? If you're selling them, I might be interested

 

[sharktale]

Hi, I had hydra in my golden baby bristlie tank, its quite hard to get rid of. Firstly how big are your babies? as hydra will eat tiny fry. It was stuck on some pebble things I had in my tank and on the glass. I was doing 10% water changes daily and I was scratching it off the glass with the tube from the syphon so it went straight up the tube. After a few days I couldn't see it anymore and thankfully I haven't seen it since. How much are you feeding? Hydra can occur by overfeeding.
Julie

 

[Joby]

Thanks Def those links were useful. I've completely scrubbed the tank and boiled everything, but as I wasn't supposed to have gravel in there I've just left it bare now. If I get any survivors then you're welcome to one for free in exchange for all those platy babies

Sharktale the babies are 11 days old and about ____ this big, but some are smaller. It was the smaller ones that were going missing They are being fed microworms and newly hatched BBS but as I said, I had gravel in there and shouldn't have as it was an accidental spawning, so I guess if the fry weren't getting all the live food then this was beneficial to the hydra!

Fingers crossed they will be ok now. They seem non the worse for their little adventure and are now tucking in to some dinner

 

[sharktale]

Glad to hear they are ok they would be too big now for hydra to eat, they have to be tiny. I thought about breeding bettas and your lucky they spawned unexpectedly, not sure if I will or not as I have loads of babies at the mo, golden bristlenoses and 2 different broods of cichlid babies (paralabidichromis sp (georgeous fish) and A calicos) I love seeing babies in a tank

Julie