BIG WORM

[beareef19]

Tonight while I was feeding my tank, my wife noticed something fighting with one of the starfish. I lt was a 8inch worm :shock: that was white to tan in color. Looked like a tropical centipede, my guess is a bristle worm. Should I take it out, leave it in, is it benificial or detrimental please give me some info. I have heard of "Wormzilla" on ReefCentral but I don't want to deal with something that big.

[Sherri]

I believe Misti has one also! I'm glad I can't look under the bottom of my tank...that is how she found hers. I'm sure she'll read this thread. Fighting with the starfish, huh? Whoa...good luck.

[matt]

I'd definitely leave it in; it's probably a beneficial bristleworm. Best detrivore around, so they say. If you have a deep sand bed, I'd consider removing the starfish.

[beareef19]

any other replies out there?

[GaryP]

Are you taking bets on who wins that fight?

Gary

[beareef19]

well the star got the food and the worm went under the rocks, so I guess round #1 goes to the star.

[TAXMAN]

I was going to post about this same thing tonight. Are Bristles good or bad. I have mostly heard bad things. I found one in the tank tonight. Just a couple of inches long though. Not the mammoth talked about on Reef Central. LOL

[::pete::]

Heres one opinion w/ a couple links. (http://www.ipsf.com/#anchor37692)

[Jenn]

I've seen one of these in my tank. It was under some rock that I had taken out and I didn't know what it was, so I trashed it :oops: I have seen others since then and have left them alone.

[GaryP]

Here's the problem. Supposedly there are good bristle's and bad bristle's. I have never seen anyone describe how to tell the difference. Does anyone have a good bookmark stashed out there?

Gary

[TAXMAN]

I pulled everyone I found out of my FO tank. This has been a couple of years back. I was always told they were bad for the tank. But now I am finding they are actually needed for the Reef system. So I am going to leave mine in. That settles this question for me. :)

[matt]

Predatory bristleworms are very rare in reef aquariums, from everything I've read that's fairly recent, like within the last few years. You're much more likely to encounter predatory flatworms. Shimek has several articles about various worms. There are several at this site:

http://www.rshimek.com/reef/OnlineArticles.htm

[malofish]

I used to pull'm out of my aquariums and make a super brisle worm 5.5 I was only cool during feeding time, the rest of the time it looked like a dead pile of rocks small filterfeeding inverts lived there with no prob.

[Instar]

A few posts back matt said to take the sand star out if its a deep sand bed. I disagree with that as they don't feed fast enough to hurt anything, they feed by adsorption on algae and detritus (slowly) and the sand needs to be turned over as much as possilbe to keep it from turning into a nitrite factory. They are not feeding while they are moving. Worms and crustaceans can get away from a sand star. When sand stars are still, they may be feeding and you can hurt them by messing with them b/c they eject the stomach lining to feed. Someone will no doubt bring in a Shimek quote on this, but, you have to realize what he likes and doesn't like to make use of the information. As for bristle worms, there can be just plain too many in a tank. I've had some huge ones try to steal food from a BTA. I used to feed those big ones when they get hungry. Since they keep food from lying around in little places, seems good to me. I did have a big one kill a scooter blenny by accident. The worms do pack a sting in those bristles and scooters will bury in the sand at night. The wave maker uncovered the scooter one night and the worm ran into him.

[DeletedAccount]

I have a really huge monster looking thing in my tank, too. He shares tunnels with my goby shrimp pair and does not seem to harm anything. I left mine in there, interesting to watch sometimes.

[GaryP]

Larry,

So your advice would be to remove the big one and leave the little ones?

Gary