How to kill bristle worms - help!

[shaned]

My friend Mark has a 75 gal tank with LOTS of large bristle worms. They come out of his rocks at night and we believe they are attacking some livestock too. What's the best way to get rid of these vermins? Do they have any natural enemies that will EAT them? Can you poision them without doing damage to other items in the tank? I've heard you can remove the rock and soak them in freshwater but that's a lot of trouble .. any easier method would be preferred if possible.

Thanks,
Shane

 

[jaydm93teg]

i bought an arrow crab and it took care of my bristle worm problem......but let others chime in on this before you buy one.....i dont think the arrow crab is reef safe and i think it can go after hermits and snails and things like that.

 

[mvm]

put a piece of shrimp in some pantyhose and the BW will get stuck in the hose. Remove and you're done....

 

[zdaytonaroadster]

arrow crabs are supposted to kill them

 

[budsreef]

All tanks have a lot that come out at night and they are beneficial except for a particular type that is actually rare. I doubt that they are eating anything that is alive for the most part they act as cleanup crew.

 

[etoh_is_good]

if they are hungry they'll go for corals that may be recovering. i've seen them eat zoas. first they ate the dying and then the healthy :yuk:

 

[jaydm93teg]

what can u get that is reef safe?
I like getting new critters to take care of problems

 

[jaydm93teg]

haha post 2 was mine about the arrow crab but i heard those were not reef safe....i heard those would eat polys and stuff like that.

is that incorrect?

 

[jmaneyapanda]

Personally, I think bristleworms get some of the worst rep in the hobby. 99.9% of the time, they are harmless. I take that back- they are beneficial. There are certain types which are predatory, but I find it very unlikely that everyone who posted has them. I have billions of bristles in my tank, and they are welcome detritovores.

 

[markl]

i had a 90 galon reef tank had some type of worms. they looked like tubes comming out of rocksbig and fat. i didnt have a bunch of corals yet but did have two clowns. i woke up one morning to the arrow crab had caught/killed my clown fish and was eating it.it did do a hell of a job cleaning my tank but after i got rid of it after 3 months of letting it eat. the bristle worms came back.when i broke the tank down we found one atleast 10-12 inches long and fat as a pencil.

 

[dough]

Ditto - what Panda says!!! Unless you can actually see them attacking something l wouldn't worry. After 14 years in the hobby I look at them as a sign of a healthy tank. They will also cycle in numbers depending on available food.

 

[js1218]

yellow watchman goby will eat them take a little time. will do the job

 

[dannybradley]

Panda is right on the money on this one. This is coming from someone that has been stung probably few hundred times by them, and is still on their side.

It is impossible to have a reef tank free of them. IF you want to control them- certain wrasses, arrow crabs, Royal Dottybacks, triggers will all eat bristleworms. Some of these fish will do more harm than good in the long run.

 

[jaydm93teg]

well as long as they arent going to eat any of my coral then i am fine having them in my tank but the second i see them going after a sleeping fish or zoa then its time for some bristle worm control.

 

[budsreef]

jaydm93teg;189102 wrote: well as long as they arent going to eat any of my coral then i am fine having them in my tank but the second i see them going after a sleeping fish or zoa then its time for some bristle worm control.

Even though we call them all bristleworms there is a certain type that is not very common that is called a fireworm. It will eat live things but the bristleworms that are in our tank for the most part will only eat dead or dying things. Mostly bristleworms are controlled by the amount of food they can find in our tanks. If there is a lot of excess food/nutrients then their population will grow; that is the benefit of having them. If you use a fish or some other means for control of the bristleworms then you will still have a lot of excess food/nutrients with no means of controlling that and that would present a much greater risk of bad things happening in your tank.

 

[jaydm93teg]

right right i gotcha

THANKS!!

 

[clownking]

dawgdude;189033 wrote: Ive seen a very large one eat part of a fishes eye while it was sleeping. It was a fluke that I got to see it and kept smacking the glass but the fish didnt move! The fishes eye popped out afterword and the fish seemed fine. How it didnt feel the eye being eaten, I dont know. But it lived for years after that.

lmao "kept smacking the glass but the fish didnt move!" been their done that.:doh:

 

[soarin']

dawgdude;189033 wrote: Ive seen a very large one eat part of a fishes eye while it was sleeping. It was a fluke that I got to see it and kept smacking the glass but the fish didnt move! The fishes eye popped out afterword and the fish seemed fine. How it didnt feel the eye being eaten, I dont know. But it lived for years after that.

I used to believe the hype about bristles being "reef safe" too, until I saw a large bristle worm eat my new peppermint shrimp. The shrimp was really healthy, and there was a large bristle that lived at the top of the cave (in a hole in the rock) where the shrimp hung out. The bristle was big enough that he took food away from the shrimp (scallop, etc).

I thought it was funny to see the worm steal food from the shrimp, and it had been a few days since I fed the shrimp (worm) so I saw the worm coming out looking for food but it I thought it was no big deal. Then the shrimp molted and the next morning at 5 am I saw the shrimp jammed into the hole at the top of his cave. The worm didn't bother to wait and take the food from the shrimp, he took the (now shell-less) shrimp instead! The shrimp never hit the floor -- the other bristles joined the feast and by 5pm that day the shrimp was totally eaten.

Now I prefer to limit my clean-up crew to things that don't get big enough to hunt their own meals. No matter what anyone else thinks.

I found that if you don't feed the tank for a few days the worms get hungry enough to go for any meat in a trap that you care to rig up.

I do think bristles can do a valuable service, but there's plenty of evidence to let you know that they are not totally harmless.

 

[soarin']

By the way, it was a regular bristleworm (the pink and dark kind), not a "fireworm' or anything like that. I have a bunch in my tank, and they all look exactly the same except for size. I caught him after that and keep him in a separate container (don't feel like killing him)

 

[grimreefer]

Four Line Wrasse will take care of them. I had a lot of bristle worms I needed to thin down a bit so I got two four lines and within about four months I hardly saw a bristle worm in my 125gal tank. Although they ate two peppermint shrimp, that I added to my tank, before they got to the rocks and hid so I couldn't add any shrimp and I think they thin out the bristle worms too much. I didn't see many pods in my tank either.
I don't know which was worse.