Bristleworms ate my feather duster.

[lat0403]

I walked up to my tank the other day to find the worm all the way out of it's tube and bristleworms having dinner. It's been pretty unhappy where it was because my stupid clownfish wouldn't leave it alone, so I thought at first maybe it was just trying to move. But I don't think the bristleworms would've attacked it if it wasn't already dying.

Here's a (bad) picture.

It was pretty interesting watching it all happen. The feather duster worm wasn't dead at first so it was like a tug of war going on. The worm was trying to pull back into its hole, but those bristleworms are strong. I thought about getting the bristleworms off of it, but I was afraid it would die in the hole and crash my tank. I knew it would've been really hard for me to get it out. Anyway, I have more bristleworms than I ever wanted to know about.

Leslie

 

[sikpupy]

man, that sucks, there like $80 or something!?

 

[mhills16]

no dusters are 10-15 dollars....sounds like time to invest in a bristle worm trap....

 

[SabrinaJean]

i hate those worms and i have a lot too. They suck. I got a trap for them, but they always escape by morning. Neways, bristle worms reproduce by buy sperm ( I'm not sure but i just posted a forum on that) and by dropping their tails, which then becomes a worm itself. For them to go away, someone wrote me to not feed excessive food and by that, they should starve and die eventually. Hope it works..
PS I really hate those worms for killing and eating ur duster
PPS U should look up fire worms because u might have some

 

[romunov]

Those worms are a great clean-up crew. They eat all the food that doesn't reach hungry mouths. The large numbers of worms just indicates that you've been feeding heavily. As you might have guessed by now, their population numbers are directly regulated by the food input. Hunting them out is a waste of time, IMO.

 

[BuddhaKiss]

IDK, it looks like your featherduster was already on its way out, so your bristleworms are doing you a favor by consuming the dying featherduster. If you didn't have any, your featherduster probably woulda died anyway, with nothing to help with the cleanup. Just my opinion

 

[sikpupy]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13049462#post13049462 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mhills16
no dusters are 10-15 dollars....sounds like time to invest in a bristle worm trap....

Really? Hmmm, have to check what species was in my local LFS that was $80 ...............

 

[mhills16]

yeah around here they are 7.99 to 10 dollars.

 

[lat0403]

Yeah, I'm sure it was already dying. And I'm not really worried about the number of bristleworms. I just didn't know I had that many. I always see a few, but never that many at once. They've never caused problems, so I don't see any reason to get rid of them.