my lips are sealed

I used to have a problem with that, came in with some riccia from the south island. And the hydra only flared up when i fed bbs to fry.

The way I got round it was to move the fry to a new untouched grow out tank, and put gourmies into the tank with the hydra, they cleaned them up nicley and after that i didnt have a problem in the tanks that used to have hydra anymore.

Simple

Cheers Shae

fluke tabs and copper may hurt your baby axies, at that age they are quite delicate and as you probably know will absorb meds thru their skin.

shaes method is good, i would go that way

my lips are sealed

I used Dwarf gouramies, i don't know if that would make a difference, however i have been told that both normal and dwarfs will do the job.

I would think that it would be right through the system, if your running a sump like that, however the gouramies will keep it under control in whichever tank there in at the time. The only other way i got rid of them was to empty the tanks, and basically starve the hydra. took a month. probably not very conveniant though.

I don't like to use chemicals, otherwise i might have resorted to such treatments like copper.

Cheers Shae

probably you should cut back on feeding bbs too...i have found aftering installing a uv filter...no more hydra pops up...

The only way I can see to get rid of Hydra is to do what Hercules did.

Chop off all the heads before they grew back :roll: :lol:

my lips are sealed

how big are the axies? chopped bloodworms can be an alternative if theyre big enough to recognise 'dead' foods, they smell strong too which is a bonus

Um 1 maybe 2 cm, theyve got there front legs but havent quite got there back legs yet, Ill get some more bloodworms and give that a go, cheers for that.

Theyre the first axies Ive ever bred & it was incredible seeing them in there eggs developing then hatching, sadly they maybe my last, or atleast for a while as the male passed on about a week or so after they hatched - he started swimming in spirals sorta thing and passed on pretty quick - probably my fault due to bad water conditions!

I read in a uk mag years ago that you can kill the hydra but not the fish with a 9 volt battery (the square ones) just put wires from each terminal into the tank water and the hydra get fried but the fish are fine (even fry) I've never tried it my self cause I've never had to - but I trust the mag (Practical Fish Keeping) so I'd give it a go if I were you!

sorry to hear that axies seem to be one of those animals that arent a skill thing to breed- its normally more luck so i hope you find another male that likes your female

unsure if youve seperated the sizes out but if not that would be a good idea if you can as they tend to go thru a canaballistic stage once they are able to move themselves about- smaller siblings taste great apparently :lol:

True, yea I read that somewhere else and wasnt too sure if it was true or not, but i suppose its worth a try and ive gotta get a new 9v for the smoke alarm so may give it a try in the next few days!

In saying that the hydra are in setups with 3-6 tanks all joined and running to a sump so there's a fair bit of water all up so i doubt it will be powerfull enough, hmm ive got a spare car battery somewhere, that should give them a buzz :lol: :lol:

Yea i geuss im just lucky i got some babys out before the male karked it, I suppose i should seperate the sizes as im sure theyve already gone canabalistic looking at how many are left thanks for the advice,

If you have some loaches they will clear most of it. Good luck.

thanks good thinking, Ive been meaning to get some loaches to control the snail population aswell so maybe time i got some then!

Ive found with stopping the feeding of the live food theyre almost non existint but theyre still there and if/when I do feed microworms or daphnia again im sure theyll be bak in numbers, If I clear the tanks out of the bn's and danio fry etc whats a good treatment (copper?) to get rid of them, any suggestions??

Also for treating plants when moving to another tank cani use a lil bit of bleach maybe to get rid of the hydra an snails??

Just did a quick search and came up with this.

Add 6 milliliter to 100 liter tankwater of a 35% formaline solution .

It will kill all hydra in 24 hours and then siphon the bottom to remove the dead hydra.

There is no effect on fry fish or plants which cannot be said of medication sold in the aquarium industry.

The same solution but 12 milliliter per 100 liter tankwater will kill all planaria but I use this dose only without fish in the tank as a safety precaution

Hydra will wipe out your fry and planaria will eat all the eggs.

Alan 104

With the bleach dip, be careful. It works, but I also killed all my java ferns with it. They seemed fine, and then died a week later. Totally snail free tank though, but also java fern free.

Thanks Alan, thats sounds like good stuff.

Just done a quick search and cant find anything on "formaline" did you mean formalin??

Either way do you/anyone know where i could get some of this??

ljtan thanks for your input so what sort of dosage of the bleach did you use as sounds as though its good stuff, maybe too good :lol:

You can get formalin from the fish store, could be be in one of the bottles for worm treatment.

I did 1 : 20 dip, which I got off the net. Its good, but some plants don't like it. The java moss is surviving fine, but the fern didn't like it too good. But hey, it may not have been EXACTLY 1:20 in the bleach dips defence, but it sure was satisfying to see all the dead snails at the bottom. It was like gravel.

Formalin is formaldehyde gas in solution and can be pretty severe but effective. You need to be careful with old stock as it can form a precipitate that is even more toxic so don't shake the bottle before you use it.

well just to top it off ive finally identified these lil flat worm things ive got in the same tank as PLANARIA, darn things hopefully the formalin help kill these aswell as the hydra!