Last week I discovered I had a hitchiker in my tank. After catching only glimpses for a few days I realized that it was a small red crab with white stripes and beady little red eyes set very far apart on it's body. Not wanting to take any chances with my seahorses, I opted to do a freshwater dip on the rock he was living in to flush him out.
I set up my freshwater bucket, got the rock out (after much rearranging of the landscape, since of COURSE it was on the bottom of my "reef"...).
Within 10 seconds... the crab comes out! yippee!.... but as im doing my little dance of joy (and scaring the dog in the process...).. something ELSE comes out of the rock.
I see a black worm start to emerge. It slowly poked out its head, but then very quickly shot out of the rock.... all 8-10 inches of the thing. It was truly gross, haha.
The best description is as follows:
Long segmented worm. Apparently many sharp spines along both sides. About an inch thick and about 8-10 inches long. Tentacles coming out of it's head end, and four eyes. Although it appeared black in indirect light, under the tank lights it was blackish/brownish with a bit of translucent red showing through the armor.
I took it to pets unlimited where they thought after some internet research that it might be a "clam worm", and it did look a lot like the one we found on the web, but i found a better fit at: http://www.wetwebmedia.com/polychaeidfaq3.htm">http://www.wetwebmedia.com/polychaeidfaq3.htm</a> int the second picture down. (and we determined that the crab was a little quarter sized mithrax )
If anyone has any better ideas on what it could be, or has any experience with big ol' worms of this type, please share. I'm wondering if it was good that I removed it from the tank, since in the time it took to get to the fish store it ate 3 whole PE mysids. I'm wondering if it had gotten bigger if it could have started messing with the fish and seahorses in the tank.
Obviously, the crab and worm have been co-existing in this piece of Honeycomb live rock, but.... since I didnt choose to put them in the tank I am just trying to find out a little more about worms and crabs and their pros and cons now.
If anyone has any info on big worms, or can point me to any good websites I'd appreciate it.
I set up my freshwater bucket, got the rock out (after much rearranging of the landscape, since of COURSE it was on the bottom of my "reef"...).
Within 10 seconds... the crab comes out! yippee!.... but as im doing my little dance of joy (and scaring the dog in the process...).. something ELSE comes out of the rock.
I see a black worm start to emerge. It slowly poked out its head, but then very quickly shot out of the rock.... all 8-10 inches of the thing. It was truly gross, haha.
The best description is as follows:
Long segmented worm. Apparently many sharp spines along both sides. About an inch thick and about 8-10 inches long. Tentacles coming out of it's head end, and four eyes. Although it appeared black in indirect light, under the tank lights it was blackish/brownish with a bit of translucent red showing through the armor.
I took it to pets unlimited where they thought after some internet research that it might be a "clam worm", and it did look a lot like the one we found on the web, but i found a better fit at: http://www.wetwebmedia.com/polychaeidfaq3.htm">http://www.wetwebmedia.com/polychaeidfaq3.htm</a> int the second picture down. (and we determined that the crab was a little quarter sized mithrax )
If anyone has any better ideas on what it could be, or has any experience with big ol' worms of this type, please share. I'm wondering if it was good that I removed it from the tank, since in the time it took to get to the fish store it ate 3 whole PE mysids. I'm wondering if it had gotten bigger if it could have started messing with the fish and seahorses in the tank.
Obviously, the crab and worm have been co-existing in this piece of Honeycomb live rock, but.... since I didnt choose to put them in the tank I am just trying to find out a little more about worms and crabs and their pros and cons now.
If anyone has any info on big worms, or can point me to any good websites I'd appreciate it.
.
