good or bad bristleworm?

I'm 100% with you on that one, mate. I had pulled a nasty worm or two from my tank. Mom and baby... or dad and baby... could never find the other spouse, but I'm sure it's there.

 

Found this crawling across my acan that I'm hoping to keep alive. I want to say it's the same one. It's living UNDER the skeleton of the acan. I'm not sure if this will help the acan or not.

 

If your corals don't appear to be suffering damage, it's one of the good guys. The Fireworm, which gave bristleworms a bad rep several years ago, has a nasty sting in each "bristle" which lines both of it's sides.

 

If you look close, there are two worms in that top picture.

 

Those are your normal bristle worm, they are doing what they are supposed to do. I would sure rather they consume the bi-products of decay than not. Same thing would happen if you put a piece of fish or any meat in the sand. At night and some brave ones during the day will come out to eat it. Circle of life thingy!!!!!!!!

 

I strongly agree. Those bristle worms are surely eating decaying tissue and cleaning your coral.

Sent from my phone using my two opposable digits

 

That's good. If/when ( ) this acan decides to die, I'm sure I'll have fun popping its skeleton off the rock and saying hello to the bristleworms.

 

If they were after the acan's live tissue those pieces would have eaten clean the first night.

A large bristle worm can clean a dead or dying clam shell out over night.

I have a huge bristly worm around 2 feet if not more, going on over 3 years now. He can eat like no tomorrow and cleans up any left over food. I have no hermit crabs so he does a great job on the clean up.

 

I'm fine with them picking up the extra food and I'm glad they're eating the dead acan tissue. I teach in Biology at Iowa (the University) so I'm fully aware of the role of scavengers. Though a 2 foot bristleworm might just have to be removed. In a Biocube 29... that's just a bit too big.

 

Biology my favorite subject by far cool!!!

My tank is 28 gallons. The first year I found him, I removed him and then put him back in the tank. He resides in the same burrow as my goby. Some clownfish breeders use them in fry tanks to eat all the left over food and dead fry.