Reef Discussion

[Susan Bates]

Hi again, caught this yesterday, how big do they grow? he is about 20cm long and 4-5cm wide

 

[Rob]

WOW..... I assume some will say great cleanup crew..... I say creepy, and not for my tank.

 

[Susan Bates]

WOW..... I assume some will say great cleanup crew..... I say creepy, and not for my tank.

I agree Rob, if i can get them I will get out

 

[Wazza22]

WOW..... I assume some will say great cleanup crew..... I say creepy, and not for my tank.

I agree, i started my tank out with all dry rock and put 1 piece of LR in for "seeding". I noticed about a month ago a bristleworm about 10-20cm creeping around early one morning. In the last week i have seen my Blue tang and a Zebra Dart fish both swimming around with bristles sticking out of them.
The Tang was near the tail while the Dart fish was all the way down it's side.
Neither of them seemed to have any reaction to it but my fear would be if they got those bristles on an eye ...

 

[MagicJ]

My biggest reached out around 60cm from a rock but with it's tail still hidden :)

 

[Savage Henry]

I have a big one sitting underneath a rock. I could get it out any time I wanted, but I choose to let it stay.

You poke at yours and I bet it just curls up right? No malice in it at all. All it does it come out at night and look for uneaten food etc.

I think these ones are OK. BUT, mine, probably like yours, has gotten too big for the tank. Hence, the best they can do to hide is literally hide underneath a rock. They are too fat to slide inside the pores within the rock.

I will eventually remove mine and unfortunately kill it, but only because it's too big.

 

[Susan Bates]

My biggest reached out around 60cm from a rock but with it's tail still hidden :)

oh my god......

 

[MagicJ]

oh my god......

I consider them as a great addition to the tank - I am often somewhat dismayed when I see ignorant people (primarily on Facebook pages) claim that all bristle worms must be destroyed by whatever means.

 

[Susan Bates]

I consider them as a great addition to the tank - I am often somewhat dismayed when I see ignorant people (primarily on Facebook pages) claim that all bristle worms must be destroyed by whatever means.

I know they are good for the tank but wouldn't they need thinning out sometimes, i find they get so big and so many of them

 

[Wazza22]

My biggest reached out around 60cm from a rock but with it's tail still hidden :)

holy cow, every have any of your fish get tagged like i described above?

 

[MagicJ]

I know they are good for the tank but wouldn't they need thinning out sometimes, i find they get so big and so many of them

I like to think that the population of bristle worms in a tank is self regulating - increasing numbers could be a sign of over feeding.

 

[MagicJ]

holy cow, every have any of your fish get tagged like i described above?

No, never. Blue tangs like to hide away in the rocks of a night time so that could be why yours ended up encountering a bristle worm.

What do Dart Fish like to do when the lights are off?

 

[Wazza22]

No, never. Blue tangs like to hide away in the rocks of a night time so that could be why yours ended up encountering a bristle worm.

What do Dart Fish like to do when the lights are off?

On or off they are always burrowing in the sand under rocks. Having said that they are out more now i have lyretails in the DT
The don't bury themselves either, they just move a heap of sand to make a large hole. This could be because i don't have a deep sand bed, 2-5 cm at most

The way i set my rocks up i have 4 base rocks for each island of rocks to make a cave and certainly on one of them they have moved all the sand out from within the cave as i can see the acrylic sheet i have the rocks sitting on to protect the glass.
I suspect this is where he got tagged by the worm

 

[192k]

An old story, but a good one about a big worm :)

And

 

[Azfish]

My royal grammer shares its cave with a few worms, i can tell when it's had a rough night; it usually has spikes coming out of its face :)

I say leave them, they are part of the clean up crew and form part of the biotope.