Bristleworms trap 'em or keep 'em

I have a lot of bristle worms in my tank, might even have fireworms not sure.

Anyway, some of them are quite huge by my scale 3-4 inches when they aren't stretched all the way out.

In speaking to someone at the LFS he mentioned that my large population of worms dropping bristles may have been what stung / irritated the yellow watchman goby that came with my pistol to death.

thoughts?

I have a new worm trap in the package ready to be deployed.

I don't mind them in my tank, don't mind seeing them and have always treated them as part of my CUC but if it takes thinning them out to get another Goby I'm willing to do so.

I just don't want another coral banded shrimp in my tank

 

Arrow crab eats them as well I believe.

 

your obviously over feeding imo if you have 4 inch ones in there, try to trap some, but cut back your feedings as well, as they are getting all the left overs.

 

Bristleworms aka Fireworms, tomato tom.......

Fireworms are Bristleworms.

My YWG lives in the same burrow as a 2 foot bristleworm, no issues and this is a long term relationship.

As mentioned before feedings are usually the issue with large populations.

You will never get them all and once you remove one you open up real estate for another.

 

Fire worms are a type of bristle worm but not all bristle worms are fire worms. It's like...all retirees are vets but not all vets are retirees... They're good to have in the tank for aeration and clean up until they get ungodly big...even the big ones don't do much and I've read several accounts of fish/inverts denning up with huge worms. Probably not what caused the demise of the ywg