Bristle worms?

I found 2 LARGE bristle worms in my large center piece rock that are about 1/4-1/3 x 3-4 inches. I tried fresh water dip and killed about 30 smaller ones but the big ones are still there somewhere? I tried a homemade trap with holes and shrimp(bait) but after 3 days didn't catch any. Any Ideas on how I should get rid of them or do I need to? I read when they get larger they will attack other fish and anemones if they feel threatened.

Leave em. Great part of your cleanup crew.

ritter678 wrote:Leave em. Great part of your cleanup crew.

+1

If you don't want them give them to me! :-)

Lol

I will never forget the timei pulled a rock out of my sump to get to a suction cup, and by the time i retrieved it, a bristle worm about the size of a new #2 pencil that was either on or in the rock, had decided to wrap itself around my thumb and crawl across the back of my hand... and i finally see it and had a kneejerk reaction and did my best effort to pitch that rock THRU my bedroom door... ick... still makes me cringe at the thought of it...
But yea, they are benificial to your tank so long as you keep their population in check
No matter how creepy they may be lol

Win, I can sympathise with you. I often wake up in the middle of the night (hence the 2.30 - 3.30 posts), I will leave the lights off, and take a led flashlight and scour the tank. The size of some of the Bristleworms is scarey, but to have one crawl over your hand...yuk!

And yes Kevin, 8-9 inches long isn't unusual it seems.

ok, I officially don't want these in the tank anymore When feeding my anemones this morning I had to take a tweezers to a bristle worm as it had a hold of the side of my sebae and was actually pulling it back to its small hole in the rock, now I also know why my condylactis moved off that large center piece rock. What is the best way to start getting rid of them without killing off all the rock and other inverts.

Try to find a large coral banded shrimp if you don't already have another type in your setup. They'll take care of the smaller ones and be a natural way to keep their population down. It's possible that they used to have a larger food source so their numbers grew... but now numbers are increasing and food is decreasing leading to the more aggressive behavior. This is just a guess. They're likely the primary scavengers in your tank though... so be careful removing too many because you would likely need to purchase more scavengers to replace them.

The larger ones you can try to trap. Take a 20oz coke bottle and cut off the top couple of inches. Invert that so that it creates a funnel into the bottom part of the bottle. Place a piece of krill or shrimp (or pellets... any food) in the bottle and leave it in the tank over night. Do that often and you'll catch many of them. If you happen to have extremely large ones the best thing to do is get a 1 LED red light and literally hunt them down a few hours after dark.

Good luck!

I have peppermint shrimp and i don't think they eat bristle worms. I'll have to see if there are any in our LFS. if not I will be contacting you for a order.

They always have a couple cbs at petco, they just tend to be on the smaller side

I thinl they were like $27 each.... i think