PlanetCatfish.com

I was so excited yesterday because my corydoras habrosus laid eggs!! As I was staring intently at the tank, I noticed there are hydra everywhere. It's a 10 gallon tank, other tankmates are 1 male betta, some rasbora espei, 2 otos and lots of snails. How can I get rid of the hydra??? What should I do with the eggs? How long until they hatch?

Thanks!

You could remove the eggs to another tank or container with water from the main tank. If you sieve the water though some cloth or something, you might avoid transferring hydra to the tank.

Or remove the fish from the tank and treat the water with methylene blue. I don't know if the methylene blue kills the hydra, but maybe?

...just my suggestions...hope it helps.

The standard treatment for a hydra infestation used to be to drop two copper wires in either end of the tank connected in series with a 9v battery. Leave running for an hour then do a 50% water change.
You should be able to google that, I might not have the details right.

The easiest and best way to get rid of Hydra is to buy a couple of small Blue Gouramies, Tricogaster trichropterus, they will make short work of the Hydra. Regarding the Cory eggs I would remove them and put them in a floating container in the main tank, if you run some water of from the main tank through some filter wool that should stop any Hydra getting through. Add an airs tone to the container to keep the water moving, the eggs should take 4 days to hatch.

Ian

Thanks everyone!

Ian -- how long do I leave the little cory fry in the container? Does it matter what I use? What do I feed them when they are born? I have not had any fry yet except for guppies and they pretty much do everything on their own

I will look into the blue gourami... I am concerned about getting one since the only tank I would be able to move him to would be my 37 gallon with guppies and the research says they can be aggressive as they get older.

After the fry hatch it takes another two days for them to use up their yoke sac, C. habrosus are a reasonable size when born so a little pre-soaked powdered flake or micro worm would be fine. I you change 50-75% of the water in the container every day once you start feeding. I normally use 1/2 gallon ice-cream tubs to raise fry in and they are OK in there for the first month.

This is a spawning log on C. habrosus from my site.
http://www.corycats.com/Spawning_log_22.htm

Ian