I received the February/March issue of Coral magazine today and I was reading Daniel Knop's editorial when I noticed a reference to an article on page 60 that Knop says will serve as a "worming." It's a play on words with "warning." Naturally I stopped reading the editorial and went straight to page 60 to see what this mysterious "worming" was all about.
On page 60, I found a photograph of a huge (52" long x 1" thick) "bristleworm." The accompanying article is titled, "Size matters, or The Giant Bristleworm." The author, Karlheinz Klein, relates his experience with disappearing corallimorpharians and Xenia and even "some smaller fish and shrimp." At first he suspected a really large crab but further investigation revealed the culprit to be a really large "bristleworm." See scary photo!
That's pretty much it. One large photo of an unidentified "bristleworm" and two pages of text but no attempt at identification. The thrust of the article, especially with Knop's reference to it, is that "bristleworms" are a potential threat to the peace and tranquility of your reef aquarium.
It's really unfortunate that a magazine of this excellent caliber would publish something like this without any attempt to identify the worm in question or say anything at all to dispell the impression that all bristleworms might grow this large and be this destructive. Actually it's unfortunate that they even used the term "bristleworm" at all rather than the animal's family name. I assume it's a eunicid of some sort but perhaps one of you polychaete experts reading this who happens to have the latest copy of Coral magazine can take a look at page 60 and tell me what you think it is.
On page 60, I found a photograph of a huge (52" long x 1" thick) "bristleworm." The accompanying article is titled, "Size matters, or The Giant Bristleworm." The author, Karlheinz Klein, relates his experience with disappearing corallimorpharians and Xenia and even "some smaller fish and shrimp." At first he suspected a really large crab but further investigation revealed the culprit to be a really large "bristleworm." See scary photo!
That's pretty much it. One large photo of an unidentified "bristleworm" and two pages of text but no attempt at identification. The thrust of the article, especially with Knop's reference to it, is that "bristleworms" are a potential threat to the peace and tranquility of your reef aquarium.
It's really unfortunate that a magazine of this excellent caliber would publish something like this without any attempt to identify the worm in question or say anything at all to dispell the impression that all bristleworms might grow this large and be this destructive. Actually it's unfortunate that they even used the term "bristleworm" at all rather than the animal's family name. I assume it's a eunicid of some sort but perhaps one of you polychaete experts reading this who happens to have the latest copy of Coral magazine can take a look at page 60 and tell me what you think it is.
