aXio;1063640 wrote: I absolutely LOVE Bristleworms. Even introduce them on purpose to tanks that I feel may not have gotten any with the initial live rock.
In my opinion they are hands down some of the best cleanup crew available. Snails and Hermits tend to die much easier and don't do as good of a job turning the gravel over. Personally I wouldn't get carried away trying to get rid of them. If you see any big ones during the day you can always pull them out with some tweezers. Their population increases when their food source in the sand and rock increases. So if your are doing proper routine maintenance then there should be no way of getting a population explosion. Plus it is nearly impossible to get rid of them 100% by just put pulling rocks you find them on. Only real way is to tear it all down to bleach the rock and get brand new sand. Or restart with base rock... but as soon as you take home some live rock from ANY store or even sometimes coral... you risk introducing them back in the system.
Are far as possibly getting stung... yes there is that risk. Only time I ever get stung by them is when doing a full tank tear down and I'm not paying attention. I've never even so much as touched one on accident when doing basic tank maintenance or moving a piece of live rock somewhere else in the tank.
I have to disagree with this statement Debbie. I believe they are crawling around out in the open right now because it's a brand new setup and they have very little food source if any at all. So they are probably actually slowly dying with no food source.
I completely agree.
I've had my hands bristled, it's not that big of a deal. Soak the bristled finger(s) in some vinegar, it will melt off the bristles.
Obviously don't deliberately touch them with your fingers, but when you've handled as many tons of LR as I have (literally tons over the years) - it happens.
As for bristleworms in the tank - their benefits outweigh any risks in almost all cases. The ONLY exception I'd make is for dwarf seahorses (Hippocampus zostrae) - I have seen a bristleworm pluck a dwarf seahorse right off its holdfast. Otherwise, they don't bother healthy living things, and make short work of uneaten food or waste.
If one has a huge population of them, they are over-feeding their tank, and the worms are a great indicator of that.
Tiny serpent stars - sorry - they aren't 'bristle' stars - serpents have smooth legs and the stars with prickly legs are brittle stars - brittle because of their penchant to drop a leg if they are picked up or feel threatened. The stars are good janitors too but they are nowhere near as efficient as bristle worms.
I never really understood the purpose of nuking good live rock with bleach/acid... might as well just start with all dead stuff, since that's the end result. It will never again have the biological diversity that the stuff off the reef does, with all its goodies that survive the journey.
Jenn
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