Interesting Discovery

[drehere]

Is there a good worm ID site around somewhere?

I too found a couple of worms I've never seen before the other night. I'd be quick to just say they're bristle worms of some sort, but they're much longer and skinnier than I've seen. Also has what I would call legs rather than bristles. Tan in color. I'll get a picture.

[mharris7]

I'd go to reef central and run it by Dr. Shimek in his forum. Pics help though

[Instar]

Sounds like this is referring to spaghetti worms.

There are perhaps dozens of species of worms in your tank. Many of them you can't see at all. Most are scavengers. Some eat algae and will graze on any surface. They appear to be kinda thorny segmented and are not covered in bristles like bristle worms. They have a set of feelers and feeding rasps on their heads that makes the head look like a little T at the end of the worm. Perhaps the worms get to 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch long usually. Someone posted a pic of them on here a while back. They, although they eat algae, will graze across the closed polyps of things like pipe organs and green star bryarium and damage the star polyps to the point of killing the polyp even though that is not their food. They seem to be indiscriminate toward it whether it be zoozanthellae algae in a polyp or other micro algae on rocks and glass. Just eat where they are at the moment. Some fish eat these worms, keeping the population in balance and below the significant numbers to notice damage in many reefs. This type worm eats many times its body weight in some common species of hair algae, so there is a benefit to them.

The small brittle stars that are white are good detrivores. The ones that are tiger striped are similar. I have a couple dozen of the tiger stripped ones and have not seen them do anything but capture food the fish don't get. Total arm span on them is maybe 2 inches now. Very thin arms, not enough bulk to be dangerous to fish. A couple of them live under coral colonies and there is never any problem with that.