Bristle worms and brittle stars

[havenoclue]

I have many bristle worms in my tank. I've read different opinions by different people. Some leave them in and some try to get them out. In the beggining I just left them alone, but the population has grown tremendously. They don't appear to be doing any harm, but I decided I'd like to at least knock the population down a bit. So far I've been dropping extra shells into the tank and removing them once a bristle worm has moved in. It works, but doesn't seem to be making a dent in the population. I don't seem to be very quick with the tweezers. I'd rather not starve the tank because I don't want to starve all the other little critters, especially the tiny brittle stars, I have tons of those. My question is this. If I buy one of the critters that are known to eat bristle worms will it feed on the brittle stars as well? I'd rather it didn't. Are there any that would perform the worm hunting task and leave the little stars alone? It's only a 20 gallon tank so any worm hunter would have to be appropriate for a small tank, and be reef safe. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[ophiura]

Well, both of these animals are scavengers, so if population is getting high, the first thing that we question are things like feeding rates, stocking, water quality. Let's start there.
Personally I don't suggest removing bristleworms as most are beneficial.
It is possible that what you might add to eat the worms would also eat the brittlestars. But as mentioned, since they are in effect reaching stocking levels based on available nutrients, you could find yourself in a bind if you continue with that nutrient load, but decrease the number of scavengers.

 

[havenoclue]

My water parameters have stayed pretty consistant and within the specifications. As it is a small tank and I've been trying to rely on only natural filtration with deep sand bad and live rock I do a 1.5 gallon water change each week. As far as stocking, I have two clowns, 1 cleaner shrimp, 7 nassarius snails, 3 astrea, 1 tubo snail, 1 emerald crab, and 6 hermits (2 red leg, 2 blue leg, and 2 zebra). As far as feeding I think that may be the culprit. I feed once a day and I'm always worried that the crabs and snails won't get enough so I don't really skimp. Plus I feed my open brain a bit of silverside once a week. Good point about removing scavengers while keeping the nutrient levels the same. I didn't think about that. I guess my tank is needing all those scavengers right now or they wouldnt be thriving. Maybe I'll cut down on the feeding a bit. Or maybe I'll just leave it all alone since everything seems to be healthy. Thanks for the reply.

 

[ophiura]

A nitrate reading will be especially indicative of the nutrient load. Do you have any algae issues?

 

[havenoclue]

Sorry about the delay, haven't had much time in the past few days. No I haven't had any real algae issues. I had a significant brown diatom bloom after first cycling, which went away pretty quickly. I never really had a big hair algae bloom which I understand is fairly common. I only had a couple small patches of it and they went away. I haven't done a full testing in about 2 weeks though. Tomorow I'll test everything and post it to see what you think.