What is this thing?????

browniebuck

browniebuck

Active Member
We found a rather interesting looking hitch hiker on a piece of LR...it is at least 6 inches long...but I don't think that I have seen the entire thing. It has bristles along the sides and has some blueish irradecent spots along it.
Some of the pictures aren't all that good, but a coupld aren't too bad...ANYONE KNOW WHAT THIS IS AND WHETHER OR NOT IT IS SAFE?????



 
sea n life

sea n life

Member
i think its a big bristle worm dont touch it they STING if you can get it out get it but i dont think they hurt anything in the tank
 
reefer545

reefer545

Member
definately a bristle worm. As long as you don't see them eating teh corals they are fine. They shouldn't either. DONT touch. Otherwise, great scavengers.
 
mie

mie

Active Member
It looks like a bearded fireworm it is not reef safe, get rid of it. bang can problably id it for sure but the blue is a dead give away to me
 
browniebuck

browniebuck

Active Member
Well...what is it, a bristle worm or a fire worm. It only comes out at night and all it does is grab scraps of food. I haven't seen it going after any of our fish or inverts, so thus far it hasn't been a problem, other than grossing out the wife!
 
fedukeford

fedukeford

Active Member
Bristle worms and fire worms are pretty much the same thing, heres a paragraph from ReefNut about them:
These Polychaete worms are commonly called bristle worms (because their name means "many bristles") and/or fire worms (because many of those bristles HURT if you get them in your skin). They are one of the most misunderstood and controversial hitchhikers of them all. Fact is there are thousands of species of Bristle Worms/ Fire Worms with only a few being predatory and a couple being parasitic. The predatory and parasitic worms rarely make there way into our systems. So the majority of the Bristle Worms/ Fire Worms we see are beneficial scavengers.
I have read reports that when a tank gets overpopulated with Fireworms they can become problematic. With moderate feeding and a good diverse population of other scavengers, this should not be a problem but sense they can reproduce both sexually and asexually… giving the right conditions, they could reproduce quickly.
 
sea_nacl_h2o

sea_nacl_h2o

Member
it is not a bearded fireworm..don't get rid of it
This is how I can tell if its good or not is that if you look on its back it has a black pearly streak on its back. this is a good bristle worm..yours looks like this one
The bearded fireworm skin is grayish pink with red legs and white tips.
 
browniebuck

browniebuck

Active Member
Originally Posted by sea_nacl_h2o
it is not a bearded fireworm..don't get rid of it
This is how I can tell if its good or not is that if you look on its back it has a black pearly streak on its back. this is a good bristle worm..yours looks like this one
The bearded fireworm skin is grayish pink with red legs and white tips.


WOW!!!! Great pics. Mine definitely looks more like the first picture. So...no matter how big this anaconda is (and how big can they get???), it should be ok as nothing more than a scavenger (which explains why I see it grab leftover flakes off of the sand at night)???
 
reefcrazy81

reefcrazy81

Member
its good and if u would like to read up on all worms get the marine fish volume 9 2007 annual mag tells all about the good and bad worms
 
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