Wife "YELPED" this morning....

If it is a brittlestar, I would still remove it. They can get big and nasty. And they grow pretty quickly. I had one for a while. I put it in my nano until I could get it back to the LFS. Then it died. I can't say I mourned it's passing too much.

 

I've never removed a bristleworm from any of my tanks in the almost 15 yrs now in the hobby.
This is a good read:

Polychaete (aka "bristleworm") FAQ For Reefkeepers

 

Now that was a good read...Very informative. Book marked for referance.
Thank you.

This has turned into a brisleworm thread somehow? oh well...

Mine have not bothered anything live in my tank, and have seen blenny and crabs very close if not even being "sniffed" by the worm...but I was told that if your seeing them in daylight hours...you have too many and it is only a matter of time before they become a problem. ie eating good stuff you want to keep.
Retort?
LG

 

Don't know about that, but It's never bothered me to see them in the daytime.
I don't see anywhere near the numbers in the daytime that I see at night, but each tank I could probably spot half a dozen in about 10 minutes.
They are a self regulating thing, if there isn't enough food for them, the population decreases.
Personally, I use bristle worms as an early sign of problems when I spot them on a coral that I can see nothing wrong with. The bristleworm knows decay, no matter how small the patch is, and it moves in to clean it up.
Therefore, if I have a bristleworm on a coral I'd better be looking for the cause of the decay that drew the worm to the spot.
It might be coral warfare, water conditions, whatever, but I know at that point I need to do something fast or the coral/corals may be doomed.
This habit of the worms going to even minute spots of decay are responsible for the postings that bristles are killing their corals/clams etc.
There are only a few types of the worm that can cause problems and they are seldom found in reef tanks.
I've never had one in my reefing career of almost 15 years having 10 tanks most of the time, but now down to 6.

 

i see them in the fuge at my LFS...

so are they bad for the main tank with coral? and acceptable in the 'fuge?

 

Personally, I'm going by this information -
Bad Type Bristleworms Control - Introduction

On the whole worm thing.

Last night and this morning, my wife pulled 7 more of these suckers out. We have the feeling that it's an infestation.. I'm ok with having a few, but we are upto 8 now that she has pulled from the tank....

 

If you remove all of your bristleworms, your tank will suffer. It is very rare that 'bad' bristleworms make it into our systems and when they do, you will notice because your corals will suffer. Many people think that common bristleworms are eating their corals when, in fact, they are simply eating the dead flesh off of a coral that is dying/suffering for other reasons.

 

As with all things in life, balance is the key to a healthy, successful habitat... With that being said, we are limiting the amount of these lil'farts in our tank by hand. We have a few shrimp on the way that will keep their numbers in check too.

"BALANCE" is what we want, not to be over-ran.

-Fritts

 

I hear ya.