Bristleworm scores direct hit......

A fireworm is a bristle worm.. I know they pack a way nastier sting, I belive one species likes to munch coral too.

 

I would try to remove all of them with tweezers or similar methods before attempting to use vinegar to melt them.

But yeah, a fireworm is a sort of bristleworm that hurts a lot more, and some like to eat coral.

I had some that would like to kill sea hares in my old 35g. That was disgusting.

 

Scccccaaaaaaaaarrrrrryyyyyyy!!!

 

It is a fireworm, as long as the coral's are fine I would leave most of the worm's be. I love my bristel's. I have a 5 inch Hammer Goby that loves them also.

 

Thought it was a bad idea but did it anyhow. Kinda like attaching fireworks to your body and lighting them. You're too funny

 

Well that's good lol!

 

LOL When you're in that situation, you figure you have to do something, even if all the options sound like bad ideas... A couple years ago I was in Kiribati, and even though I had gloves with me, I stepped out onto the reef flat and flipped a rock without putting them on. The place was infested with bristleworms/fireworms (same thing, your choice on names), except these had bristles all the way up and down the sides without breaks between the tufts. On the first rock flip, I got between somewhere between 1000 and 10,000,000 bristles in my thumb. It didn't particularly hurt, but since I'd been through this on a smaller scale before, I knew that if I broke them off and then pressed my thumb against something, it WOULD hurt, like having little needles stuck in my thumb. So, I spent the next hour with tweezers and forceps trying to remove them, one at a time. If I got two or three instead of one, it would tilt them to the side and make them hurt. Problem was, they were so brittle that if I clamped down on them to try to extract them, the exposed part would shatter. So I tried to tease them out, with limited success. After working on them for an hour and removing about 1% of them, I took my knife and pulled the MissionSix trick, and just scraped them all off, breaking most of them off below the skin level. I then scrubbed my thumb against a rock to force the stubs a little deeper below the skin, and went snorkeling. The only problem I had was a little swelling, and very mild soreness. They apparently don't have any (or much) venom, more like getting stuck with tiny porcupine quills. Still worth avoiding, I reckon, since I can't exactly say it was pleasurable.

Cheers,



Don

 

Boys are funny. I don't suppose that putting tape on the bristles and then pulling the tape off lickity split would work?