Strange worms

[arnjer]

The first one sounds like spaghetti worms which are good for cleaning up your gravel/sand. Without a pic for the second one I have no idea. I have pix of the spaghetti worms where they crawled out onto the glass on my web site.


Jerry

 

[Jenemone]

Jerry,

Great pics! I don't think what I had was a spaghetti worm, although I think I have one of those also. I tried to take a pic of the #2 critter, but it is so thin and colorless that the pic didn't turn out.

The other worm is very red, and just looks like your average earthworm in shape, only much thinner bodied.

 

[Jenemone]

I discovered two critters recently that I can't identify.

1 - very thin dark red worm in the gravel, right next to the glass. It was about 2.5" long, and maybe 1/16" wide.

2 - Behind my mushroom rock, there are three things as thin as a hair, with short bristles all over them, and white in color. They come out at night from the substrate and just wave in the current, but remain attached somewhere under the gravel.

Any ideas?

 

[arnjer]

It may be a bristleworm (you don't want to touch them) but they are helpful in cleaning your tank. I also have a pic of them on my site, but they come in different colors. Some of the bristleworms are bad but the majority of what we get in our tank are helpful. Chances are if you have spaghetti worms if you feed your fish and any food is left over and hits the sand bed your population of worms will grow well. I have thousands of spaghetti worms in my sand bed. I have a bristleworm that hitch hiked in on live rock that is over a foot long now. I also have noticed a green bristleworm in the past week that hangs out under a rock in my tank and comes out to catch food flying by. If you have a digital camera try to get some pix and post them on your web site and I will take a look at them or just e-mail them to me

Jerry

[ September 03, 2001: Message edited by: arnjer ]

 

[SuperLeet]

man what kinda of bristle worm is that its on your site labled as bristleworm7.jpg

Thats incredible looking!

 

[arnjer]

It's a big one......I caught him munching on button polyps the other day so I moved them and I haven't noticed it munching any thing else. They were frags anyway I have 2 large colonies in the tank. I have seen it eat and it has big black mandibles. I wouldn't want it to bite me that's for sure.

Jerry