Shelf life of a bristleworm?

I transferred water/live rock from a 29 gallon (making it a refugium), got lazy and let it sit with some sand and about 1/4 inch of water for at least 2 weeks. As I was cleaning it out today, I noticed trails in the sand. When I moved the sand, I saw a few bristleworms. I figured they were dead, until they started moving! Do they go dormant? Those are some tough worms.

 

Bristle worms are very hardy and tough to be rid of in any system
( although they do us a service in our tanks but should be kept in check )
Over feeding will make them breed prolificly .
As far a *shelf life* on a bristle worm go's they can with stand seveer
conditions, as long as they stay wet ( not dry out ) , they can live for considerible time in rock/sand with out eating.
If you wish to rid your self of some thats in the rock and you haveit out any way.
You can dip the rock in either high salinity say like 1.040 or more ( make a bucket up of it ) or you can fresh water dip and slaush the rock around in it the bucket , ( they'll start running and coming out of the rock and drop right in the bottom of the container ).
Also if you try to pull on them , they will become steadfast and they expand and throw their bristles out, making it almost impossible to to "pull" them out of the rock and usealy resulting in breaking them .
Then congrats ! you now have 2 worms to contend with.

Care should be taken and use protective gloves, they do have a nasty sting to them.

Funny how the most unwanted and undesirable pests can live and are harder than hell to be rid of aint it .

 

Bristleworms, cockroaches, and Twinkies - tough enough to survive a nuclear attack. I see some folks have them in their refugium. Should I put them in there? Does anything eat them? They're kinda small right now. Thanks

 

arrow crabs i heard eat bristle worms. maybe a wrasse would, but i'm not sure.

 

Six line wrasses will eat them.. But they are not a bad thing really great at cleaning up food waste . And if the system is plagued with them then its a sure sign of to much uneaten food in the tank. Lots of food lots of worms less food less worms . Same applies to aptasias to a certain extent also. I have seen them up to a couple of ft long or longer is some systems..

 

I think the sedentary life of a bristleworm accounts for its shelf life. They really don't expend a whole lot of energy in their daily sludge prospecting.

They're very interesting animals when handled. They don't sting as much as they assault you with their bristles. If you've ever been pricked by a cactus you have the general idea. The spines of bristleworms are almost microscopic in diameter, and instead of a single puncture site, you have hundreds of them in your skin. It often becomes infected, leading to hot, red, inflamed fingers, or wherever the wound is. As far as I know, the spines are impossible to remove, resulting in you having to just tough it out.

As tank creatures, they're really not bad to have, just don't handle them.

 

I noticed a few in my tank before and freaked out initially because I didn't know what they were. After reading about them, they aren't so bad as long as they don't get too huge. I was surprised these were still alive with the tank temp below 65 degrees and no flow. I just don't want to see anything like that 85 foot worm in the overflow pipe in my tank ;D

 

Biggest bristle worm i had in my 29 was around 6 inches....fat little guy, i trapped him with one of them coralife green trap tubes and flushed him. I leave the little ones alone.