white wormy thing?

[klongo]

Well, I've seen my first unidentified object this afternoon - I've had my LR for almost a month now. When I came home this afternoon there was a 2 inch long wormy thing - looked like a thin string with "arms" coming from both sides - kinda like this:
|||||||||||||||||

[hr]
|||||||||||||||||
He quickly crawled back into the middle of a rock, so I couldn't take a picture. Any thoughts?

 

[klongo]

Possibly/probably based on the pictures I just Googles and searched this site.
Now, do I need to remove it? Very contradictory info regarding this - people here say no, but the internet is FULL of ways to get rid of them......

 

[barry cuda]

For that matter, what's wrong with bristleworms? Every book I've read says you need to get rid of them, but doesn't say why. And so many people here say they're beneficial... what gives? :notsure:

 

[wrassecal]

They are good for you tank eating detritus and generally keeping things cleaned up. If somethin dies they will eat it fairly quickly therefor helping keep water chemistry in balance. They do not eat living inhabitants. If you have a sand bed they help keep it clean and shift the upper layers. I keep a tank just for breeding bugs, certain snails and bristle worms because my sixline wrasse loves to eat the bristles and I have to keep hte population up in the main tank.HTH