Sponge, hydra, cyclops

Does anyone keep or culture sponges or hydra or cyclops? I've allowed hydra to grow over large areas of some tanks, I've never had the green kind that have symbiotic algae in them. I've had some tiny sponges but not the large colonies I've seen in pictures, sponges also have green species that have the symbiotic algae in them. Some on this list once sent me some mud that when mixed with water resulted in a large batch of cyclops that were bigger than Daphnia magna, they had to be 1/4" long. How about it guys and gals, any one have experience with any of these or anything else unusual?

I've had a horde of green hydra in a tank in the basement. They began murdering my cherry shrimplets in mass so I treated it...I now have regular ones that come and go. It's a soil tank so they have plenty of food. I use rainwater collected from downspouts. If the gutters are kept squeaky clean I won't have hydra.

I have tried to get sponges to grow in my tank on a few occasions with no luck, and I have both cyclops and hydra, though not on purpose. 1/4" cyclops though? Those sound kinda neat, almost like pets.

I also have some kind of strange Annelid worm that got into my tanks. I'm actually trying to monoculture that one...it's a fascinating creature, much like a long Dero worm, except they actively swim if disturbed, more like a roundworm would.

The worm sounds cool, I've kept earth worms for long periods of time, i found the worms under rocks in a stream. The green sponges and the green hydra would be interesting, the huge cyclops were very interesting and fish lived to eat them even more so than daphnia. I'd love to get some of that mud again...

I get lots of green hydra when I use wild collected micro-verts for raising fry. A sunny tank helps.

I've always tolerated small numbers of hydra as interesting critters. Recently though with a batch of sunfish fry that got 100% wild for over a week, the hydra became a nuisance. They captured food meant for fry and constantly harassed the fry by zapping them when they brushed against them. These were all green to greater or lesser extent.

It took a series of three 80% water changes with careful glass scraping to knock them back. I never eliminated them but the fry went on to a larger planted tank so it's moot.
I'll discourage hydra after that.

Cyclops are present in all my planted tanks. I can't seem to get a daphnia colony to go a week without cyclops appearing. They represent [by my own unscientific observations] the bulk of the copepod species harvested for fry food, in my locals anyway.
Breeding them is less a problem than preventing them. There are a bunch of species. Some I've seen were too fast for blackbanded SF fry to catch and others were clearly toxic as they were always spit out and subsequently avoided. I've started a s-load of fry on 'em though, tropical and native.

Cyclops are present in all my planted tanks. I can't seem to get a daphnia colony to go a week without cyclops appearing. They represent [by my own unscientific observations] the bulk of the copepod species harvested for fry food, in my locals anyway.
Breeding them is less a problem than preventing them. There are a bunch of species.

Forgot to add, re cyclops from recent observations;
They are mostly carnivorous and eat their fellow copepods by preference. They will happily live off their own copious broods but if you're trying to encourage daphnia, rhotifers etc, they will quickly decimate such.
Their superior mobility granted them an advantage when I used a flashlight and siphon hose to harvest fry food from a concentrated bucket of critters. They swam ahead of the siphon and after two or three harvests from a given bucket, they pretty much were the only species left. Eventually they'd even knock back their own broods enough to where the bucket load was played out. All this in 48 hours tops.

I dont see hydra as much, but I almost always get cyclops when I hatch branchiopods. Just find a depression that holds water during the rainy season, and scoop up some dirt (top inch or less). Add distilled water or equivalent, stir really good, and put a light on it. The muddy water will clear up once it settles. After a few days turn the light off and use a small flashlight and see what comes up. If you get tadpole shrimp and want to see what else you have, you need to remove the tadpole shrimp as soon as possible. I usually suck them up with a turkey baster after about 1 or 2 weeks. They will eat everything else. Also once tadpole shrimp get bigger, they will muddy up the tank non stop. Best to put them on sand.


Here is a short clip of me holding the flashlight over the water. The big ones are clam shrimp, Eulimnadia texana, the next size down mostly fairy shrimp, but as you see there are lots of other tiny critters moving around.

Great clip of the fairy shrimp, i grow them sometimes and I've had clam shrimp and tadpole shrimp. How did you embed that clip? I don't know we could do that here....

How did you embed that clip? I don't know we could do that here....

I converted it to a looping animated .gif

Edited by iturnrocks, 07 July 2010 - 05:50 PM.

I dont see hydra as much, but I almost always get cyclops when I hatch branchiopods. Just find a depression that holds water during the rainy season, and scoop up some dirt (top inch or less). Add distilled water or equivalent, stir really good, and put a light on it. The muddy water will clear up once it settles. After a few days turn the light off and use a small flashlight and see what comes up. If you get tadpole shrimp and want to see what else you have, you need to remove the tadpole shrimp as soon as possible. I usually suck them up with a turkey baster after about 1 or 2 weeks. They will eat everything else. Also once tadpole shrimp get bigger, they will muddy up the tank non stop. Best to put them on sand.


Here is a short clip of me holding the flashlight over the water. The big ones are clam shrimp, Eulimnadia texana, the next size down mostly fairy shrimp, but as you see there are lots of other tiny critters moving around.

Neat thanks never saw that before.