how to get rid of feather worms

[mattf0124]

During the summer my ac went out for about a week while I was out of town, and I'm sure everyone here knows what I came home to, its was about a 90% loss, out of frustration I just let it be for several months , topped off the water and that was it, I'm getting it back on track now and slowly restocking, my problem is about 1/4 of the tank is infested with white feather worms, its a 65 high, and this one segment of the tank has at least one to 200 hundred worms, and I want them gone. A few is nice, but this isnt nice, and they are all on key foundation pieces of my rockwork, so removal and a scrub is a last resort, any reef safe animals that are pretty much guranteed to eat these? and quickly? I know 6 line wrasses eat them on occasion, but slowly if at all, I would love to have any advice

this pic was taken shortly after the lights came on,and its just a portion of the infestation, the bubble, colt,stars and zoos are survivors of the inferno

 

[bleedingthought]

I think some butterflyfish eat them, also. Good luck!

 

[mattf0124]

they also eat just about everything else too, I'm looking for something a little more reef safer

 

[Anonymous]

Copper bands will eat them with a voracious appetite. They may or may not also nip LPS and Soft corals. I think if you feed them live food regularly they will leave corals alone. Depends on the individual too. Anyway, butterfly's are the first thing that came to mind for me as well.

 

[Anonymous]

I think arrow crabs eat them too...
Not for sure, but they are cool.

 

[ChrisRD]

Personally, I'd leave them alone. They're harmless and if you want to mount corals in the area (over/around them) I don't see why that would be a problem.

JMO...

 

[mattf0124]

they too dense, and it looks tacky to me, and I would end up having to mount sps dircectly in the midst of them, wich I really dont want to do. Also they arent completely harmless, they've choked out two zooanthid colonies so far and overtook a small frag of montipora

 

[blackcloudmedia]

Well theres always breaking them off or smashing them, or I suppose you could try a few techniques used on aiptasia like target shooting boiling water and stuff.

 

[Anonymous]

If you have that many you probably got a problem with nutrients in the tank as they are strictly filter feeders. They aren't photosynthetic so if you cut down on feedings and the like you'll most likely have them die off through starvation.

 

[Anonymous]

http://www.saltcorner.com/sections/zoo/ ... anurus.htm

Keeps flatworms in check too.

Highly territorial though. - Not with anything else from what I've seen, but if it sees its refelection in the glass.... Well, it'll sometimes rearrange rockwork just from the kicks of its tail. 8O

A lot more colorful than the faded pic leads too.

Sfsu is on track too.. - In the past, mine have usually starved out because I target feed sparingly.

 

[mattf0124]

They are there as stated in my first post due to a massive tank disaster resulting in about a 90% loss, then several months of neglect, as I was thinking about just tearing it down. I literally had to scrape off solid sheets(only three, the front was one sheet,and the two sides) of 3" thick hair algae. One thing that does puzzle me is the fact that they are all located in one area, take the tank and divide. into four equal sections top to bottom, and 95% of them would be in the 2nd section on the left.

thanks for the suggestions, but please keep them coming, as manual removal would require me to remove and scrub a ton of rock, and the wrasse while very pretty, gets really large, and is a boulder roller, and I have a very tall tank with very tall rock structures, an avalanche would be a big problem, at first I thought giant bristle worms would be my main problem, but they are easy, a flash light and tongs , I've removed 4 15" to nearly 3' ones, those things are scary when they are that big I should have taken pictures, and I know one was 3' for sure as I have a 3 foot tank, and it was spread flush corner to corner across the front of my tank. I'm not feeding at all right now, just water changes , light trace elements and kalk, havent fed the tank since all the fish died except for my bi-color blennie, and he stays fat from the algae and pods and such, I have given thought to trying to plug the holes in my reef, obstruct the sides and back of the structure then add a very large butterfly, let it mow down and remove it but that will probably be more trouble than its worth, fish removal in a reef is never pretty. I've also thought about removing as much live stock as I can, as there isnt much, but there is the blennie and assortted polyps all over the rocks that cant just be removed, and shocking the tank somehow, like a 30% fresh water change or a massive ph drop, but I dont wanna do that, the tank is doing well and stable, the bubble in the pic was huge before the disaster, the only bit that was left afterwards was about the size of a nickle when fully open, now its covering over 60% of the skelton, and opens up beautifully, so I dunno, theywill taper off over time, but its gonna go real slow, and I want them gone now, sorry for the ramble, been up 30 hours and trying to adjust to new pain meds, hope any of this makes sense, thanks again

 

[Anonymous]

I'm with Chris on this one in that I think they'd be perfectly fine left alone.

But since you want them gone, and are unwilling to manually remove them, you're left with a biological control. Unfortunately there aren't too many things that eat feather dusters but not other things. Butterflies are the only thing that comes to mind. I would choose a Klein's over a Copper banded simply because they are much hardier. Klein's will eat Aiptasia too. I've kept two Klein's in reef tanks. They may pick at Protopalythoa, Sarcophyton and Sinularia spp. Other than that they've been model citizens for me. Keep em well fed.

 

[ChrisRD]

If you want to reduce their numbers why not just scrape a bunch of them off the rockwork manually (use a butter knife, flathead screwdriver, etc.)? There's certainly no need to dismantle the tank and scrub rock. The tubes are pretty fragile and they'll break right off.

And as for them overtaking corals - first I've ever seen or heard of such a thing in 10 years around the reef hobby. What I can believe is that when you neglected the tank and some corals died-off the fan worm population took off due to the high nutrient levels and perhaps covered some of the areas where there were formerly corals. IMO this doesn't constitute fan worms "choking out" corals. At least not under normal, healthy reef tank conditions. IME they are not an invasive organism and are certainly no match for a healthy zoanthid colony (which is practically indestructable IME)

Again, that is JMO/JME of course...

 

[mattf0124]

Well, most of the corals died from the overheating, about two weeks ago I placed a healthy frag of zoos in the infested area, now its a frag of feather dusters, and the zoos are just a solid mass,like a pice of stepped on chewing gum, except for 3 or 4 polyps that arent covered with the worms yet, they are open and look just fine

 

[ChrisRD]

Just try scraping the worms away from the areas where you want to mount corals - use a clean flathead screwdriver or something similar. I see plenty of nuisance algae in the pic which indicates excess nutrients (conditions that will create prolific fan worm growth). Now that you've got the tank headed in the right direction again, I would expect the worms to be less of a problem in the future.

If you want to totally eradicate them I think you'll have to go with one of the methods already mentioned.

 

[pcardone]

Use paitence, take your time and pop them off one at a time.

 

[shr00m]

im with these guys dont be such a feather duster nazi let them be, what did they ever do to you ? ANSWER THAT

seriously though, flip the rocks around, move stuff around shouldnt be that big of a deal