Just witnessed a bristle worm spawning! (pix included)

[cybermeez]

After lights out I was walking past the reef tank and noticed the water had suddenly become opaque. Thinking something bad had gotten/spilled into the tank I scrambled to turn on the lights. It seems that in addition to birds and bees, bristle worms do it too and - like coral - all at once. I've been wondering where all those prickly little bastards have been coming from. Now I know.

This what my tank looked like when I turned on the light:

Here's a close up of one worm releasing its gamates into the water (the pink wispy-looking stuff). Sorry it's blurry (ignore the algae in the foreground), it was hard to get a closeup of one worm at just the right moment. I've added an arrow as a visual aid:

Just when you think you've seen about all you're ever gonna see in your tank, something new happens. And to think I've been considering giving up on reefing lately.

 

[Lenny718]

Very cool Robin!

 

[masterswimmer]

Awesome Robin. Did your fish and coral go into a feeding frenzy? Should have been like a sm?rg?sbord.

Nice to see such a great occurrence.

Russ

 

[roc5288]

That's what happens when u got BARRY WHITE playing on the radio LOL.

 

[DEL]

what time of the night was this? how often do you see it happening??

 

[cybermeez]

I'm sure the corals and other filter feeders had a blast!

It was some time around 9:30pm. Lights out is 8pm so the moonlights had been on for a little over an hour. This was the first time I've ever seen this. I did the usual 20% water change a couple days before. There was nothing out of the ordinary except that about a week more than usual had passed between changes and I needed to change out my filter socks but didn't.

It never occured to me that bristle worms reproduced sexually because I've only seen it when one worm physically splits into two. Apparently they are hermaphoditic so every wom in my tank is going to soon be a mom...and a dad. My Six line will never be able to keep up!

 

[KathyC]

...my fun with bristleworms..
http://www.manhattanreefs.com/forum/photography/21027-bristleworm-spawning.html

Not surprised to find that you had recently done a water change Robin - mine usually spawned the same night, though later in the evening.

btw - the down side to it happening after lights off is you miss the color show - the sperm is pink

Happy corals

 

[cybermeez]

Neat-o! It must have been the water change I did because the full moon is almost 2 weeks away.

 

[Reef Reaper]

Very Nice!!

 

[JARRETT SHARK]

cool pics