worm ID please??

tomato clown

tomato clown

Member
I had a rather large 40lb chunk of L/R in my 25Gal.
After looking at the tank for a year now, I got sick of seeing this large eyesore right in the middle taking away from ainything else I had in there, So I just took it out and broke it into 7 good sized pieces.
My question now is as I broke it apart, I found a few things I never knew I had. 1 was this large 4-6 inch worm, it was red and black and looked very similar to an earthworm. As far as I knew salt would kill an earthworm though, so I ruled that out.
Dan
 
nm reef

nm reef

Active Member
Could of been a brisstle worm......I remember seeing a picture of a large section of LR broke in half with a monster brisstle worm in it.........
 
whipple

whipple

Member
I have the same thing but its kinda fuzzy on the sides. Ive asked the LFS and they told me they dont know but if i bring it in thell be able to tell but i wasnt gonna tear my tank apart just to find out. As far as i know it hasnt caused any problems with anything HTH
Bill
 
aczmey

aczmey

Member
Hi!
It seems to me that you have a nice size bristle worm. I had around 15 of them in my tank ranging between 2” to 6”. They would come out of the LR to eat when I was feeding the fish to get some too. They especially liked pellet food that I fed to my engineer goby. It’s very neat to see how they swallow the pellet (you can actually see it moving though its body). Also they did not appear causing any trouble, but I was starting to worry about their large size. They did not seem to have a natural enemy. Then I put in a pistol shrimp that apparently developed a taste for them and they were gone within a couple weeks after that. I am sure that there are some of them hiding somewhere but I haven’t seen any for a couple of months.
 
jodeman

jodeman

Member
TC, If it's not a bristle worm, I can say that I have the same things (as I know what a bristle worm looks like because I also have some trophy sized bristle worms). These worms that I've got look just like an earth worm, NO BRISTLES. They are mostly active at night, and haven't seemed to bothered anything. I see them extend out from the lr about 2-3 inches and seem to be picking up trash. I've wondered what they were also.
 
tomato clown

tomato clown

Member
wow this is really starting to worry me. It actually looks like a cross between this bristleworm

yet has the same description as this Glyceridae.....
These worms look relatively innocuous, but can be surprisingly voracious. An unprovoked worm looks for all the world like the earthworms that you buy at your local bait store for a weekend of fishing (and in fact these worms are often sold in coastal areas around the Pacific Northwest as bait for marine anglers), but that harmless appearance can be very misleading. Unlike their oligochaete (another class of annelid worms, originally discussed in Part 7, to which the earthworms belong) cousins, the glycerids have an eversible proboscis (a hidden set of muscular jaws that can be suddenly shot out to grab prey items or "bite" larger creatures that threaten the worm) armed with four Rattlesnake-like fangs (in that each has a poison gland associated with it, and a bite from the animal allows injection of a debilitating venom that enables the animal to subdue its prey or fend off potential predators).

Dan
 
vkesu

vkesu

Member
We had a couple of fireworm, they are the darder red with white bristles comming out from the sides. We also found a huge earthworm looking thing (head size of my small finger)
If..you dont already know, DO NOT TOUCH WORMS WITH YOUR HANDS!! They are supposed to be good for your sand and reefs, but look don't touch. ;) After a lot of reasearch, most carry poision of some sort.
 
tomato clown

tomato clown

Member
I guess I'll just leave it be, It has been in the tank for over a year now, so unless I start seeing problems pop-up, he's gunna be a keeper.
Dan
 
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