Dr Mike Oxgreen
Member
Not sure if I've put this in the right part of the forums - mods, please move it if you think there's a better place for it!
Whilst sharing the following picture of my HC 'oxygen factory', I noticed the illegal immigrant. Look about a third of the way down the picture, about a fifth of the way in from the left - the whitish tubular thing with tentacles. It's a hydra!
And now I'm seeing several of them. One has tentacles nearly half an inch long. In fact I think there are at least two more rather out-of-focus in the picture: one near the top left and another near the top right. They seem to like attaching themselves to the HC and also to the glossostigma - do they like the oxygen-saturated water?
Do I need to be worried? The tank is a 25 litre nano, with 7 chili rasboras, 3 otocinclus and some blue velvet neocaridina shrimp (not sure how many, and they're dying off one by one, which is another story).
My guess is that they might threaten baby shrimp if I get any, but probably won't manage to catch adults. I also guess that adult shrimp will be immune to the sting due to their shells. The chili rasboras are probably too big to be caught, but might they be stung and harmed?
I have tried squirting a tiny amount (1 ml) of 3% hydrogen peroxide at them, but this had no effect at all.
If they're likely to be harmless to my other inmates then I'm happy to leave them as a fascinating addition to the tank.
Whilst sharing the following picture of my HC 'oxygen factory', I noticed the illegal immigrant. Look about a third of the way down the picture, about a fifth of the way in from the left - the whitish tubular thing with tentacles. It's a hydra!
And now I'm seeing several of them. One has tentacles nearly half an inch long. In fact I think there are at least two more rather out-of-focus in the picture: one near the top left and another near the top right. They seem to like attaching themselves to the HC and also to the glossostigma - do they like the oxygen-saturated water?
Do I need to be worried? The tank is a 25 litre nano, with 7 chili rasboras, 3 otocinclus and some blue velvet neocaridina shrimp (not sure how many, and they're dying off one by one, which is another story).
My guess is that they might threaten baby shrimp if I get any, but probably won't manage to catch adults. I also guess that adult shrimp will be immune to the sting due to their shells. The chili rasboras are probably too big to be caught, but might they be stung and harmed?
I have tried squirting a tiny amount (1 ml) of 3% hydrogen peroxide at them, but this had no effect at all.
If they're likely to be harmless to my other inmates then I'm happy to leave them as a fascinating addition to the tank.